With his past few films, director Neil LaBute has been trying to inject the truth-telling misanthropy of his early work with a genre template. But while his Wicker Man remake was risible, Lakeview Terrace looks to be a more successful attempt on his part. While violent onscreen cops are nothing new- and Samuel L. Jackson has by now played a cop more times than Dennis Farina- more interesting is the current of racism that we see in his character. All too often in movies, it's the white characters who object to mixed marriages and relationships, while the minorities nod their heads in approval at the progress we've made in society. Yet at a time when many minorities are proud of their racial identities, things are rarely that simple. So Lakeview Terrace could be fairly interesting for this reason, adding spice to what looks to be a fairly routine thriller in the Unlawful Entry vein.