The Lookout, a heist thriller set in a small town on the dead flat plains of Kansas, is the directorial debut of screenwriter Scott Frank, whose scripts - ranging from the lively (Out of Sight, Get Shorty) through the indifferent (The Interpreter) to the lousy (Flight of the Phoenix, Dead Again) - show he knows a lot about the business. This one artfully crosses the Coen brothers' Fargo with Christopher Nolan's Memento to spin the tale of a brain-damaged young man with short-term memory problems who must write everything down, seduced into helping a vicious gang rob the bank where he's employed as a cleaner. As with Fargo, the snow is thick on the ground and ends up soaked with blood. It's a competent film, and Jeff Daniels is, as always, first-rate as the hero's blind flatmate.