Mark Reviews Movies: LOU

Lou, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 23, 2022

Of all the odd and surprising bits of casting, there's something particularly entertaining about the role of the completely unexpected and seemingly unlikely action star. As a case in point, here's Lou, which puts Allison Janney in the role of a hardened former CIA agent, capable of just about everything this plot throws at her—from tracking an abducted girl, to brawling one-on-one with a burly man, to navigating a broken suspension bridge, to other acts of physical daring and clever cunning.

Janney isn't the last actor on the list of whom one would expect to fill such a role. Indeed, it's difficult to believe that she, who is not much of a movie star and more a character actor in the first place, would be on such a list in the first place. Credit, then, is due to director Anna Foerster and whoever else made this casting happen. Janney so clearly fits this role—giving it a hard-edged attitude, obviously, but also imbuing the character with a lifetime of regret and a stubbornness to even acknowledge that such is the case—any kind of uncertainty or skepticism about the casting is quickly discarded.

The story, written by Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley, is pretty fine, too. Sure, it bites off a bit more in terms of emotion and politics than it's ready to handle, but the skeleton of it, in which Janney's mysterious Lou has to find a young girl who has been kidnapped by her violent father, is solid. It's mostly an excuse for a series of fights and perilous scenarios, which increase in number and frequency as the screenplay hits that wall of how far the writers are willing to go with these characters and the political backdrop. Foerster, though, can stage an action sequence with enough skill, provides these characters their quieter moments, and gives the whole enterprise a steady sense of momentum.

The film isn't doing anything new, beyond the specific and apparent novelty of the casting of its star. Does that really matter when it does several familiar things well?

The story begins with Lou, living alone—save for her trusty dog—in a cabin in the woods on a remote island in Pacific Northwest. She's presented as a puzzle from the start, in a montage of quiet scenes of Lou digging up a hidden box, burning some papers with spaces of redacted text on them, finishing off a drink, and sitting in a chair in front of some hanging tarp. Positioning a rifle beneath her chin, Lou seems to be at the end of her story just as this one is beginning.

It's not the end, of course, and while the filmmakers use that tired cliché of the fast-forward prologue, they're thankfully smart enough not to jump too far ahead. Before Lou's interrupted suicide attempt, she goes about her not-so-routine day, circa 1986 or so (Ronald Regan is on television denying the accusation of his administration selling arms to Iran, and the period, by the way, figures into the plot, instead of just serving as a way to complicate matters by removing modern technology).

A storm is approaching the island, and after withdrawing all of her money from the bank, Lou goes to visit Hannah (Jurnee Smollett), a young woman and single mother to Vee (Ridley Asha Bateman), to collect rent. To cut to the chase (figuratively and literally), Vee is abducted by her father Philip (Logan Marshall-Green), a supposedly dead man accused of—and who surely has performed—war crimes in Central America as part of some top-secret mission. When Hannah goes to Lou's house to use her phone, Lou jumps right into hunting the kidnapper and finding the girl, with Hannah accompanying her.

Again, all of this pretty straightforward and familiar stuff, but the plotting gets a boost from the isolated nature of the setting—making the search seem far more difficult and making part of the conflict a matter of surviving the environment—and how streamlined the whole narrative is. It's just Lou and Hannah, making their way through the woods, dealing with the elements, being hobbled by something as typical as a blister, and only once—until at least one of them has a confrontation with Philip—having to fight with a couple of the villain's goons. That fight, set within the tight confines of a small cabin, is brutal and bloody, and it proves Janney as a convincing physical force.

She's more than that in the role, though, and for all of the hunting and chasing that's inherent to the plot, it's a pleasant surprise how much time the filmmakers devote to giving some foundation to these characters. They key one is Lou, obviously, whose life is defined by all of the secrets—her career in the CIA is the least of them for this story—she has kept and all of the terrible things she believes her job has brought to the world. Meanwhile, Smollett is appropriately determined and no-nonsense as the mother desperately looking for her child, and Marshall-Green adds a level of trauma and melancholy to a role that could easily be generically villainous.

There's much more to the ways in which these characters are connected, and pointing out the plot's move toward standoffs, fights, and one big explosion should give one an idea of how broadly enticing but ultimately underdeveloped those connections are. Despite those shortcomings, Lou succeeds as a to-the-point and, surprisingly, character-based thriller.

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