Lakeview Terrace

When a cop’s a neighbor or an acquaintance, you should feel safer, right? Not in movies like Neil LaBute’s Lakeview Terrace. As LAPD officer Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson) tells Chris (Patrick Wilson), who’s moving in next door with wife Lisa (Kerry Washington), “That’s what you call irony, right?” It’s easy to see why Abel hates Chris: the newcomer drives a Prius and sneaks cigarettes in his car while listening to hip-hop music so his wife won’t catch him. Mostly, though, Abel hates Chris because he’s white and his wife is black — and the kind of “elitist” black that we keep hearing so much about these days. LaBute tries to engage issues of race, class, and gender in this potboiler, but his usual vitriol gives way to blood in the swimming pool and a looming wildfire that looks like the judgment of God. Maybe he wishes the fire would burn all the entrapping clichés away so he could start again from scratch. 106 minutes | Boston Common + Fenway + Fresh Pond + Chestnut Hill + Suburbs