Inside Man : L'Homme de l'intérieur

Let me just lay all my cards on the table, so there are no surprises later in the review: "Inside Man" is frustratingly bad, Spike Lee was the wrong director for this, but I was able to walk away still a fan of Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, and Jodie Foster. This is a bizarre film, unnecessarily complicated, that assembles a top-notch cast, puts them into a tense situation with all the players in place, and then has nothing to do with them. It's like the writer forgot that you needed a third act; it's all rising action with no denouement.

Washington plays Det. Frazier, a hostage negotiator who acts, literally, as if this is his first case. He has the obligatory younger partner (Chiwetel Ejiofor, "Serenity") who exists so Frazier can explain his theories and the obligatory ESU commander who wants to go in and shoot everyone (Willem Dafoe, sadly underused). Owen plays the bank robber, about whom frustratingly nothing is known except what he said into the camera in the trailer. Finally, Foster plays some sort of player amongst the Powers That Be who walks into the mayor's office, demands an update, and is given "every possible courtesy", etc. She serves no purpose whatsoever, not even in a clichéd action movie type of way like Dafoe and Ejiofor. The performances are the only good part of the movie, but there are times when you can tell that the actors wished they were in a better film. They're giving it their all, and they're getting no help from anyone else involved.

Spike Lee is up to his usual tricks here, which, in this type of movie, is a very bad thing. The details of the heist itself I won't disclose. I can't. The action is, at best, vague - extremely brief scenes of vaults opening, hole-digging, hostage roughing up, and the usual bank-robber stuff are all the details we really get. It is also inter cut with scenes of the hostages recalling the heist; their recollections serve no purpose except to confuse the audience further. "Inside Man" is curiously racist: the white crooks rough up the black bank customers, the white Foster and the mayor order around Washington, the white cops mistake a Sikh for an Arab and beat him, and even a Jewish hostage was not only a lawyer, but has a nephew who is a jeweler. Washington and Ejiofor are given no flaws whatsoever and are seen mostly being pushed around by everyone else in the movie. The action repeatedly grinds to a halt so Lee can insert quirky little subplots involving video games, Washington's much younger girlfriend and random Albanian women. They're at best unnecessary, at worst, disastrous. If we had been given a director with more focus, there is the feeling that this could have been a lean, mean thriller. But it drags and drags and drags and when we get to the end, we understand why the film stalled for so long: the ending is about as climatic as erectile dysfunction.

"Inside Man" looked like it had it all - great cast, good concept, reputable director, but the end result is a near-disaster. It's like someone threw "Dog Day Afternoon" into a blender, drank it, and vomited it back onto the screen. As I stumbled out of the theater, deprived of my money and time, I cursed the screen gods who thought to tease me with such an improbably bad movie. I thought back to a better day, when a movie at least knew what was going on even if the audience didn't, gave us characters who seemed like actual people and served actual purposes to the plot, so that even if we had to wait until the Big Twist to answer our questions, we at least had a reason to still care.

Spike Lee is one of the most consistent directors out there. Save for some more uneven pictures like She Hate Me and Girl 6, Lee's body of work is just plain impressive. And while Inside Man is not up there with Do The Right Thing, Clockers and 25th Hour, it is definitely an entertaining and intelligent thriller that does things a little differently than most cookie cutter thrillers you see in theaters nowadays.

A bank robbery in New York has gotten out of control, and it's up to police detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) to act as hostage negotiator and get the bank personal and customers out safely before things turn even worse than they already are. This turns out to be a tough case, since the leader of the bank robbers, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), turns out to be a very smart individual, who has everything planned to perfection, and who throws up surprise after surprise for Frazier and his men. But while the people around Frazier are slowly getting more and more nervous, he himself does not lose his mind, and begins a high stakes battle of wits with Russell. Things are further complicated, however, when the mayor of New York introduces a mysterious woman to Frazier. This woman (Jodie Foster) wants to protect something that is hidden in one of the safety deposit boxes inside the bank, and she will stop at nothing to force Frazier to let her inside the bank and make sure nothing happens to the contents.

This all sounds like an intriguing premise for a thriller, but the movie goes a few steps further than just having an interesting plot. Because while Inside Man does hit all the right notes when it comes to keeping you guessing about what is really going on, it is also very successful in mixing the grittier moments with comedy elements. At times, Inside Man is very funny, but in a way that does not deflate the tension. The dialogue is sharp, with the conversations between Frazier and Russell being especially fascinating, and both actors are at the top of their game in this new movie. Washington's Frazier is an intense but laconic individual, who has a permanent smirk on his face but who reads the bank robbers intentions better than anybody else, while Owen is charismatic and fascinating as the mastermind behind the bank robbery. I was a little disappointed however with Jodie Foster's role. While her part is potentially fascinating, she does not really get the chance to do anything with it other than look cool and act tough. Yes, we all know that she is very good at that, but with a bit more background story, and a bit more screen time, her part could have been even more interesting.

With Inside Man, Lee showcases an interesting way of directing thrillers. He ignores the usual build up that you see in thrillers, which consists of an introduction, a chronological development of the main intrigue, followed by a final act in which everything is wrapped up neatly (even flashing forward several times, thus revealing some important developments before they have happened), and this only serves to make Inside Man a movie that is more than your regular suspense movie. I enjoyed this original approach very much, even though he does take quite a long time to wrap things up at the end.

In the crime/mystery genre Inside Man is just a bit better than a normal good movie. It's not excellent though, for that the heist is just too far fetched and perfect. Everybody likes to watch the perfect heist but in this case it's a bit exaggerated. But other than that small detail the rest of the movie is suspenseful, or at least it keeps you attentive as you keep wondering what will happen. For that there was the excellent interaction between Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. Both did a great job with their characters. The whole cast was perfect for this story. Spike Lee made another entertaining movie, one that I will watch again in a few years.

Note: I stay away from describing the plot in any detail because it would be very hard to do so without spoiling elements of it. "Inside Man" starts out as a no holds barred, high octane action-thriller, and by its midpoint fully transforms into a breezy, tongue-in-cheek heist movie, reminiscent of The Sting. I felt it to be a little over-plotted, but that comes with the genre - the expected twists and turns are all here, thankfully mostly in non-expected ways. Contrivances abound, and we don't really learn the background of the heist (ie. how the robbers learned about their target) but the story and the overall atmosphere more than make up for this. The meticulously designed plot also compensates for the lack of real 3D characterization - save for Denzel Washington's ambitious policeman hero, who at least achieves a level of humanity throughout the story. The character interaction between him and his sidekick (Chiwetel Ejiofor of "Serenity" fame) and the frustrated captain played by Willem Defoe is great with some sparkling dialog. Clive Owen is okay, most of the time convincing as the criminal mastermind, although he spends most of the film wearing a mask. I'd say this film is harmless fun, not your usual Spike Lee fare, which goes to prove his versatility. There is a hint in the back-story at some heavy issues of the past, but it's nothing more than a macguffin that only achieves some slight significance in the resolution of the movie. There is a neat structural trickery in the use of flash-forward scenes, hinting toward the aftermath of the heist without giving away the real ending. It's used sparingly and cleverly. I can highly recommend this movie, it is never boring for a moment, what's more, I was enjoying it so much that as events were progressing toward the climax, I was wishing it would go on. And that's very rare for me in the movies nowadays.

This is a decent but not particularly memorable movie. I thought that Denzel Washington was pretty good, but he seems to have settled into a type. Confident and unyielding and always right (Coach Boone from Remember the Titans). This is fine and I enjoy watching him. This movie is about a bank robbery where the perpetrators are after more than money. It has to do with a righteous cause, but what happens is that the possibility of pulling it off and getting what they want is on such fragile ground that you need to ask the question, "Isn't there an easier way?" Anyway, the scenes in the bank are quite good but we really need to extend our disbelief at times. I've always wondered about that "get me a plane and a million dollars" business anyway. Well, there's a lot more to it than that. See this and enjoy the characters, but in the long run, it's pretty far fetched.