Race relations are turned inside out in a thriller that ultimately cops out, writes Donald Clarke

ON THE giddy morning that followed the election of Barack Obama, the New York Timesdared to tell its readers that the "American Civil War finally ended last night". This must be regarded as good news. After a century and a half of racial strife, the American people can now devote themselves to the business of getting along with one another.

Mind you, there may be a downside to this happy new arrangement. Films, books and plays that seek to analyse the dynamics of racial tension are now no longer needed. No more wet liberal fantasies such as Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. No more hand-ringing soaps in the style of Crash. Spike Lee had better think about getting a proper job.

Lakeview Terracedoesn't really fit into any of those categories, but, for its first two thirds at least, it plays like a decent version of another, more mischievous (and redundant, if the New York Timesis to be believed) genre of film.

Detailing the conflict between a gleaming interracial couple and the black police officer next door, Neil La Bute's thriller sits beside those films - Todd Solondz's Storytelling, Stuart Gordon's Edmund, LaBute's own In the Company of Men- that enjoy having their characters say things liberals would rather not hear. If you like to cringe during your yuppie-nightmare thriller, then Lakeview Terracemight be the fellow for you.

The impossibly chiselled Patrick Wilson and the dazzlingly healthy Kerry Washington play a couple of well-meaning achievers who have just purchased an anonymously comfortable house in the San Fernando Valley.

Samuel L Jackson turns up as Abel, the grumpy, widowed policemen in the neighbouring property. Within days of their arrival, friction begins to develop. Chris and Lisa (the names seem purposefully bland) make the mistake of canoodling in plain view of Abel's two harassed children. The grumpy cop pointedly fails to turn down the security lights that bleach the couple's bedroom nightly.

What really bugs Abel is his neighbours' conspicuous nonchalance about miscegenation. He begins by making pointedly acidic remarks and then moves on to actively sabotaging their lives. By the time of Chris and Lisa's housewarming, this cold war has turned decidedly hot.

La Bute, working from a script by David Loughery and Howard Korder, sets up a deliciously neat standoff in the film's opening episodes. Chris embodies all the stereotypical liberal's frailties and neuroses. He wants to think the best of his neighbour, but doesn't know how to respond to a black man who holds such eye-wateringly conservative views on social matters. Abel's entire campaign seems designed to shake Chris's smug worldview.

Welcome back Samuel L Jackson. After spending the last decade as a bad Samuel L Jackson impersonator, the great man returns to deliver a performance that is as darkly funny as it is stubbornly sinister. While bush fires make their way metaphorically towards Lakeview Terrace (there's no sign of a lake, of course), Abel runs through a barrage of attitudes that more complacent New York Timesreaders like to think only southern racists hold.

Then, sadly, as the fires begin lapping at the principals' porches, the script has a fit of cowardliness and offers us a piece of backstory that explains Abel's eccentricity in the most banal of fashions. Now transformed from an avatar of unacceptable prejudices into a traditional damaged anti-hero, he grabs a gun and invites the film to descend into the predictable morass of shouting and shooting.

Someone, somewhere has suffered a depressing loss of nerve here. Lakeview Terracedoes ask difficult questions, but it ends up delivering the least sophisticated of answers. Still, it is nice to have Sam back for a spell.

Directed by Neil LaBute. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Jay Hernandez, Ron Glass, Justin Chambers 15A cert, gen release, 110 min ***