The Lazarus Project

THE LAZARUS PROJECT starts out like it’s going to be a hardboiled crime yarn that might have been published as a Gold Medal novel: Ex-con Ben Garvey is a decent guy with a wife and a little girl, who’s trying to put his criminal past behind him. But then his brother, also an ex-con who’s recently been released from prison, shows up and tries to convince Ben to join him on one last heist. Well, you know as well as I do that “one last heist” never works out, and sure enough, things go terribly wrong.


So, yeah, THE LAZARUS PROJECT starts out like a Gold Medal . . . but it doesn’t really finish that way. From that point in the plot, the movies turns into a creepy psychological thriller, one of those movies where nothing is what it appears to be and the plot keeps taking unexpected twists and turns. I can’t go into detail without possibly spoiling it for those of you who haven’t seen it. The final twist is one that many of you will probably see coming, but it’s still pretty satisfying.


I like Paul Walker and think he makes a good action movie hero, but he’s okay in a more leisurely film like this one, as well. You can’t help but like him and root for him to get to the bottom of all the mysterious things that keep happening. The script doesn’t quite wrap up all the plot threads as tightly as one might hope, but that doesn’t keep the movie from being pretty entertaining. I’d never heard of THE LAZARUS PROJECT before, but I think it’s worth watching.