Samuel L Jackson: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Abel Turner - Lakeview Terrace (2008)

From the sublimely boring, to the profoundly overblown in one easy segue. You can recognise the intent of Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace, and its agenda to not only shock, but to claw under the skin of the audience and tear some primal outrage out of them, but its message is lost in hyperbole and forced drama that weren't at all necessary. The film should have been a slow-burning thriller, in the vein of British chiller Eden Lake, but instead, the director and writers took the vulgar Hollywood root and sold our their fundamental intentions and the film's central message about intolerance in favour of some gun battles and the backdrop of forest fires that feel like nothing more than dramatic manipulation. Jackson's performance as Turner starts out well, but like the film, it quickly escalates away from the more affecting tense drama in favour of something bigger, and more grotesque, robbing it of the promise and potential impact the opening act suggests might have been possible with a little more restraint.