Honestly, I was expecting a lame riff on Memento given the centrality of a head-injury victim to this bank-heist thriller, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that screenwriter Scott Frank’s directorial debut is nothing of the sort. Rather, The Lookout is a sincere portrait of loss and redemption wrapped in genre guise; it draws you in with its characters first, then gradually reveals the plot. Following his outstanding turn as a high-school gumshoe in last year’s Brick, Joseph Gordon-Levitt gives another excellent performance, this time as a former golden boy struggling to reclaim his life and getting caught up with all the wrong people. (DVD)