Inside Man
2006
Starring: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Christopher Plummer
Director: Spike Lee
Runtime: 129 Minutes
Distributor: Universal
Rating: R
Spike Lee directs an all star line up for this stylish, high concept heist movie in which Lee attempts to show that he can do mainstream Hollywood thrillers just as well as politically driven dramas.
Denzel Washington is Keith Frazier, a police detective trying to make first grade but under investigation over some missing drug money that he claims he knows nothing about. When Clive Owen’s wily bank robber and his crew decide to knock off a bank, it forces Frazier to step in as hostage negotiator and try and prevent a bank full of hostages from coming out in body bags. Unfortunately, that is not all he has to worry about. There is also something hidden inside the bank’s vault that could be very embarrassing for the bank’s president. Jodie Foster’s political fixer is dispatched to lean on Frazier to make sure that Owen doesn’t get what it is that he wants and offers to make all his IAD problems go away if Frazier can guarantee that he won’t.
Inside Man is the cinematic equivalent of a lap dance where the girl keeps her clothes on – all tease and no happy ending. Lee takes the oh so fashionable approach of starting at the end and then having us watch the events unfold that have led us to where we think that we are, which of course we almost invariably aren’t. The principle problem here stems from a script that is just incredibly self conscious. You can hear the voice of the writer coming through every character, Owen’s calculating mastermind in particular. The performances, while more than adequate, are just horribly generic. Denzel picks off the shelf the same old sharp, slick talking street guy who takes no shit that he has been playing for years. Owen is forced into that awful slow drawl that serves as his attempt at an American accent but actually makes him sound like he just has a learning disability. Willem Dafoe might just as well be any guy off the street for his entire minute role requires him to do. Only Jodie Foster bothers to actually put in a little effort and her ice queen “problem solver” is the only character who truly resonates. Lee opts to spend a lot of time on a genuinely engaging set up with enough subtle misdirection and clever red herrings to keep you guessing and more than entertained, but under the weight of its own showy build up the pay off is, well, crap.
Not content with being a stylish heist film, writer Russell Gewirtz can’t resist trying to somehow turn the movie into a political statement. The thriller is over around the hour and a half mark, but once the secret in the vault is revealed the rest of the time is spent with the writer on a soapbox telling us about how rich white guys are all cunts who make all their money off the blood of innocent people. Great, um, thanks for that. Despite being completely out of left field it simply doesn’t work because the foundations for such an extreme pivot were never laid. We don’t know who the robbers were and can’t buy that they are nice guys looking to do the right thing like the films asks because they are bank robbers! Maybe the Jupiter sized holes in the story will be tied up in the sequel, which is currently in the works from Gewirtz and will again put Lee behind the megaphone.
Leave a Reply