Inside Man

Taking a break from his usual racially-charged dramas, famed filmmaker Spike Lee brings us Inside Man - a heist movie that seems to have a lot more on its mind, but only nicks the surface of its own material. The film never lags, is blessed with some very good performances, and is overall an enjoyable film. But the movie is too long for its own good, and also feels the need to ram home its final revelation many times during its final 20 minutes as if we didn't get it the first time. In the end, Inside Man is a fine yet heavily flawed film that is a victim of some poor storytelling techniques.

What begins as an ordinary day for New York police detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) quickly escalates when a small group of masked men led by Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) enter a local bank, guns drawn, and take everyone inside hostage. Keith and his partner (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are sent to control the situation, and hopefully establish a line of communications with the men staging the crime. The situation becomes a massive media event, and as time wears on, Keith slowly begins to realize that he's not dealing with just another ordinary thief, and that there may be bigger aspirations behind Dalton's plans besides just money and the demands that he has made. Unknown to everyone, the owner of the bank (Christopher Plummer) has become nervous when he hears the news of the situation, as there is a certain item in his safe deposit box that could tarnish his good reputation if it were to be uncovered. He hires smooth talking power broker Madeleine White (Jodie Foster) to intervene and try to get at the box before anyone can discover it. The mounting pressure of the hostage situation and the personal agendas of everyone involved will clash during a 24-hour period.

Although the film at first seems to be your typical bank heist movie, it is slowly revealed that first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz has a much bigger agenda at hand. Without going into spoiler territory, I will say that things are not what they seem, and when Dalton's true intentions for staging the heist are revealed along with the way everything is planned out, it is quite a surprise. The film wastes no time in setting up the tone or the situation. After a brief opening monologue from Clive Owen's character, the movie thrusts us directly into the action, and never quite lets up during its entire 2-hour+ running time. It expertly blends human drama, suspense, and even some humor into its storyline without the shift in tone seeming awkward or forced. Thanks to a strong overall cast and a mostly tight script, Inside Man engages almost from the get-go. The plot is filled with twists and turns, yet never becomes confusing or needlessly complex. For most of its length, the movie rarely takes a wrong step.

But then, there are two major faults that pop up (one throughout the film, and the other near the end) that prevent me from liking it as much as I thought I should. The first is Spike Lee's odd decision to shoot the film out of sequence from time to time. The movie will suddenly cut away from the story at hand, and we'll find ourselves in an interrogation room where the various hostages from the bank are being questioned by Keith and his partner about their possible involvement in the heist. (Dalton and his crew force all the hostages to strip and dress in the same disguises they are wearing so that the police cannot tell who is who.) Not only does this take us out of the action briefly, but it also kills some of the suspense, since by watching these scenes, we kind of know who's going to be walking out of the situation okay. Some of these sudden cuts to after the situation is over seem to come right at the very middle of a scene, then the interrupted scene is continued after the interrogation sequence ends. The movie does not do this so much that it becomes a major annoyance, but I still found myself anxious to get back to the story at hand whenever it would cut away from it for another interrogation.

Its second major fault, and the one that irked me the most, is how the movie rams its own point home continuously during its final moments. After the delight of the realization of the pieces falling into place, the movie just keeps on going for almost a good 15 minutes after you think it should be over. The worst part is that it does not do anything in these final moments to tell us something that we don't already know. We've already learned everyone's role in the overall story, what was in the box, and the reason for the robbery. Yet, the movie keeps on feeling the need to remind us of all of this like it thinks we didn't hear it the first time. This was quite a surprise to me, for up till this moment, the movie treats its audience with dignity and respect, only to suddenly turn and treat us like idiots. There's just simply too much to the ending when in this case less would have been more.

Now I don't want to stress only the negatives, as Inside Man is a movie worth your time. As mentioned earlier, the entire main cast gets their own moment to stand out. Denzel Washington plays a slightly cockier and ruder hero than we're used to seeing him play, but he fits the role well, and never takes his performance so far that we wind up disliking him. Clive Owen is a perfect match for Washington with his cool, calculating, yet strangely rational turn as the head of the bank robbers. After seeing his cartoon vigilante performance in last year's Derailed, it was nice to see him back in a serious role again. Jodie Foster recovers nicely from her annoying performance in Flightplan in a role that is small, yet very important to the film. Like Washington, she too is playing a different kind of character than we're normally used to seeing her play, but she fits the role perfectly. My only gripe with the performances is that none of the hostages are able to develop any real personalities, except for a few New York stereotypes. If the movie did have to have the interrogation scenes, at least Spike Lee could have afforded us the luxury of letting us get to know them a little bit better.

Even with its faults, Inside Man is a good movie, but could have been a great one with a bit tighter editing and perhaps another rewrite of the script. It holds our attention at least until its overly simplified and overly explained conclusion that seems to barely nick the surface of the message that it is trying to make. I felt a bit cheated by the end, but I enjoyed the film enough up to that point to recommend it. Spike Lee has sometimes been criticized for hitting people over the head with his messages, but I think he took it a bit far even by his standards. Still, even at its worst, Inside Man is at least consistently interesting and entertaining. It's no Dog Day Afternoon (the classic bank hostage film with Al Pacino, which is actually mentioned in this movie's dialogue at one point), but its heart and mind are in the right place.

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