" Lakeview Terrace" is a slow-burn thriller punched up by the hot-button issues it is built on. Well acted and tautly directed, it's a movie whose juice is its realism, the easily recognizable situation, the paranoia that any homeowner can identify with.

What do you do when a neighbor makes your life a living hell? How do you deal with that neighbor when the race card is on the table? And more frightening, who do you call for help when that neighbor is a cop?

Samuel L. Jackson is perfectly cast as Abel Turner, a veteran of the force, a widower raising two kids on his own. He's got rules. He's got a chip on his shoulder. And his years with a badge have made him a bully, someone used to being able to speak whatever is on his mind without fear of consequences.

After all, he has the gun.

When Chris and Lisa, played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington, move into the suburban L.A. hillside McMansion next door, Abel's "issues" with people who aren't sticklers for his rules, for white guys in general and an inter-racial couple in particular, come to the surface. Chris may make overture after overture of the "can't we all just get along?" variety. Abel either shoots him down, insults him or says something tactless. About "dark candy" or "brown sugar" or "Once you go black, you never go back."

Since Chris has also been dealing with a variation of this from prissy-prep-school Lisa's dad (Ron Glass), he isn't inclined to shrug it off. And Abel's natural aggression is forever pushing a minor feud up to the next level. First, it's the intrusive spotlights. Then, it's the mysterious tire slashings. Why call the cops? They look out for their own.

Director Neil LaBute ("In the Company of Men," "The Wicker Man") ratchets up the tension realistically. He makes sure we see Abel's side to all this. The man has a point of view. It's just an incredibly unreasonable one.

Jackson's bowstring-tight performance works partly because of the man's baggage. He's an edgy guy with a temper. And the odd racially intemperate remark Jackson has dropped over the years has tipped his hand. He's had his issues with white people.

The film's big shortcoming is in casting the nice guy "victim." Wilson is a good actor and is perfectly believable as Chris, a man who feels his manhood threatened because, frankly, his manhood needs threatening. Abel eats this guy's lunch. We need more from Wilson suggesting the depth of the threat.

"You've got a woman you want to try and protect," Abel jibes him.

LaBute, working from a script that isn't his own, avoids the racial minefield that the story sets up and doesn't do enough with the husband-wife fissures that the situation offers. Lisa is skeptical of her husband's opinion of "the brother." She loses her doubt about the cop's true nature a little too easily.

But any home owner will squirm at efforts to try and make the fellow next door more civil, at the rude way Abel wrecks their party and the beer bust "retaliation" the cop throws just to further torment the bi-racial yuppies.

And anybody can appreciate the sinking, impotent feeling one gets when confronted with a person doing you wrong with the words "to protect and serve" on the side of their car.

See the trailer and find local showtimes for "Lakeview Terrace."