There are several good reasons to see this film, but by far the most important one is the performance of Samuel Jackson in the role of Abel Turner, an African American of Ethiopian descent who is a patrol officer of the LAPD. The story takes place somewhere on the outskirts of the city of Los Angeles in a middle-class neighborhood, with the backdrop of a slowly and yet surely approaching forest fire that threatens to consume everything in its path. Within this setting, the widowed cop and his two children (Jaishon Fisher, Regine Nehy) have new neighbors-an interracial couple to whom he takes an immediate dislike.
Jackson’s performance is not riveting so much because the character of Turner is an evil bigot corrupted by power. In fact, his character is much more complicated than that and, despite the impressions you might have from the movie’s trailers, such a description is simplistically inaccurate.
Turner is a loving, protective, albeit strictly disciplinarian father who wants to teach his children, as he explains to his new neighbor, to “respect themselves and respect where they came from”. He does not take kindly to the fact that his children saw the couple frolicking late at night in their swimming pool from the upstairs window. When he walked in on the middle of this, however, his immediate reaction was not so much anger as it was one of obvious sadness.
He goes out of his way throughout the movie-starting well before this incident, in fact-to make life as uncomfortable for the young couple as possible. He makes sure a bright floodlight shines though their bedroom window. When Turner makes excuses for not disabling the light right away, the husband turns the tables on him by installing a mirror in the bedroom window that sends the light glaring through Turner’s own bedroom window.
Though that seems to take care of the problem, it re-emerges in other forms. Turner surreptitiously slashes the tires on their automobile and blames it on unknown hoodlums from an adjacent area. When the environmentally aware husband transplants some medium sized trees along the fence that separates the adjoining properties, Turner takes a power saw to them, resulting in a shouting match that almost turns violent. When Turner sees his young daughter at the swimming pool of the young wife, dancing and laughing, in response to an earlier invitation by the woman (though of course without her father’s permission) he flies into a rage. In the course of the argument, he removes his pants and shirt and stands there in mocking disapproval of his daughter’s skimpy dress. When she defies his orders, he strikes her in front of the woman.
When the children go off for a two-week visit with his sister-in-law, Turner really lets loose, inviting his fellow officers to celebrate the upcoming marriage of a colleague at his own home, complete with bachelor party. The excessive noise and raucousness of the party in the wee hours of the morning induces the young husband to go to Abel’s house to complain. When one of Abel’s guests shuts the door in his face, he enters the party through a side door where, after an initial invitation by Turner to have a beer, he is sexually assaulted by women dancers at the party, aided and abetted by the cops, until Turner finally tells them to “get his ass out of here.”
All through the movie, however, Turner manages to maintain his rage to within manageable levels, though he channels and utilizes it unabashedly. This is the mastery of Jackson’s performance. It is not what he does. In fact, most of what he actually does is relatively minimal in comparison to the sheer menace with which he performs, and which he exudes like some ancient, primeval archetype.
When he acts on an earlier proffered invitation to the couple’s housewarming party, he takes center stage and in very short order turns what is supposed to be a cordial, gracious occasion into more of a police state atmosphere. After literally wrecking the party and ruining the evening for the hosts as well as their other invited guests, he takes his leave.
When we see Turner on the job, we get glimpses of his personality and you find yourself looking for clues as to what he is about as defined by his job description. However, there is no sign of corruption, only the evidence of a devoted police officer who willingly pulled double shifts, all the overtime he could muster, and took on extra work as a security guard in order to be able honestly to afford to move his family to a better neighborhood.
When Internal Affairs calls him to account in regards to a civilian complaint they inform him that, due to a number of past similar complaints through the years, he might want to think about retirement, and tell him to take some time off until the investigation concludes.
However, the complaint in question is from a man who had violently beat his wife and held her and their child at gunpoint. Abel and his partner saved the wife and child and Abel himself arrested the man after chasing him through an alley and disarming him after the man threatened to take his own life. He did go somewhat over the line in taking the man’s gun and threatening to kill him with it if he did not straighten up, which was perhaps a little rough and provocative. Yet, we can easily infer that, taking everything in context, the man’s complaints are without merit, to put it mildly. He accused Abel of three broken ribs, though Abel insisted to Internal Affairs that he did not do this.
We are then left with the image of a man who is a basically not only a good cop, but completely ethical, if a little rough and jaded by years of wading through the sewers of humanity. He has seen it all, and has his own official dealings with Civilian Informants, whom you get the impression he barely tolerates. Jackson plays the role to the hilt of a man who is nearing the end of the line, and who sees the newly arrived interracial couple next door as the final insult to everything he ever cared about, a slap in the face to every value he ever held dear, and a mocking reminder of his own personal failures.
The reason for Abel’s seething hatred for the couple will come as no surprise, but the movie makes up for this by getting it out of the way somewhat early in the movie. What would have been a letdown if delayed until closer to the end of the movie therefore serves instead to move the film along at a pivotal moment, while at the same time providing a major influence regarding the climax of the film.
There are unfortunately some minor inconsistencies. When the husband goes to the bachelor party at Abel’s house, he manages surreptitiously to make a recording of the proceedings, including the sexual assault, which the wife then sees. For some reason, the film never pursues this angle. Although the movie never picks up on it, we might see this as a minor inconsistency, and maybe even a realistic one. After all, this couple does not want a fight. They just want to live their lives. They are not the type to react to every opportunity to roll in the gutter by doing so.
The husband and wife-Chris Mattson (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington)-themselves are unfortunately almost reduced to secondary characters, and though the two actors who portray them are technically good, by no means are these stand-out performances. Although they manage to portray the gamut of emotions of concern, regret, fear, anger, relief, and determination when appropriate to the scene, we do not get the main impression that we should get, which is that they really, really regret moving to this house. Although the wife states as much, in so many words, we do not believe her or her husband-possibly because they are too happy to be where they are, and it shows. I am talking about the actors, of course.
As for the characters they portray, all we really know about them is she is the daughter of a successful black businessman who lives miles away and who seems to have some reservations about the marriage and the prospect of the couple having children. The couple themselves have some angst over the issue, and when the woman becomes pregnant, due to having neglected to taking the pill for a couple of days, the husband is even more fraught with anxiety and it comes more openly to the fore. He even seems to accuse her of deliberately getting pregnant, which she denies, though not very convincingly. We wonder whether this is because the wife is indeed duplicitous, or whether the actress that portrays her just does not put the point across. By this point, it is irrelevant.
What is relevant is the dark shadow cast by Officer Abel Turner, as it becomes the impetus behind the exaggerated concern of the husband as he feels a sudden, threatening rift grow between him and his wife, one that seems now to focus from inside her womb. Yet, his despair might well be the bastard child of Abel Turner, whose influence on the lives of the couple has turned what should be an occasion for joy into a matter of considerable dread.
However, Officer Turner is the one spiraling out of control, despite his skill, self-discipline, and the perverse, almost obsessive professionalism by which he goes about the business of destroying two lives. As terrifying as he is as an enemy, his controlled and channeled wrath can only accomplish so much at containing and dealing with unexpected contingencies. When it finally falls apart, there is only one way it can go.
There is a mild amount of political correctness in this film, which is annoying. The husband is an unabashedly liberal graduate of Berkeley and proponent of Global Warming activism, while Abel Turner is an equally unabashedly conservative traditionalist. Although this is never explicitly stated, we are led to surmise that if Turner had gotten some therapy to help him with his inner turmoil, not only would he have been a better father and happier person, but he, too, would be a liberal “tree-hugger”, as he once called his antagonist. However, this and the few similar and thankfully brief liberal add-ons are minor components of the film that doesn’t take too much away from it.
Jackson’s performance is Oscar worthy, and due almost solely to him nets the film a rating of three pentacles out of a possible five.
* * *
* Samuel L. Jackson as Officer Abel Turner
* Patrick Wilson as Chris Mattson
* Kerry Washington as Lisa Mattson
* Jaishon Fisher as Marcus Turner
* Regine Nehy as Celia Turner
* Jay Hernandez as Javier Villareal
* Keith Loneker as Clarence Darlington
* Ron Glass as Harold Perreau
* Caleeb Pinkett as Damon Richards
Directed by Neil LaBute
Produced by Jeffrey Graup
James Lassiter
David Loughery
Will Smith
Written by David Loughery
Howard Korder
Starring Samuel L. Jackson
Kerry Washington
Patrick Wilson
Screen Gems
Alliance Films
