Neil LaBute’s neighbor-from-hell thriller, no more than mildly provocative by his toughest standards (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors, et al.), details the escalating ill will between a newly arrived interracial couple (Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington) and the long-ensconced, widowed black policeman next door (Samuel L. Jackson), who has definite ideas of propriety and its enforcement. Reasonably graded and reined-in buildup; unreasonably frenzied and drawn-out ending. The beginning of the end involves perhaps the neatest telephone gimmick since Wait until Dark, and the raging Southern California brush fire serves effectively as both a plot device and a symbol. The photography could use a hosing-down. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
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