Having penned a pair of razor-sharp scripts for the terrific Elmore Leonard adaptations Get Shorty and Out of Sight, Scott Frank calls the shots himself on this accomplished Leonard-alike crime caper.

Star rating: ****
Dir: Scott Frank
With: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels, Isla Fisher, Matthew Goode

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Having penned a pair of razor-sharp scripts for the terrific Elmore Leonard adaptations Get Shorty and Out of Sight (directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and Steven Soderberg, respectively), Scott Frank calls the shots himself on this accomplished Leonard-alike crime caper. Set in a depressed mid-west America farming community during a bleak, snowbound winter, it concerns a former high-school jock with perception-distorting mental-health issues, Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, last seen in the inspired neo-noir Brick), who's drafted into a bank heist with a gang of no-good former classmates.

Typically, things do not go according to plan. What's really compelling about The Lookout, however, is the way in which Chris - who cannot, since a car accident, make predictions - deals with a caper he doesn't want to be caught up in. And beyond the genre thrills, the film boasts a series of well-defined oddball characters, from Gordon-Levitt's constantly bewildered protagonist through Jeff Daniels's blind best buddy to Matthew Goode's terrifying psychotic gang leader.