Title: Inside Man
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Cast: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster…
Director: Spike Lee
Release: (2006)
In their fourth venture together, actor – director duo Denzel Washington and Spike Lee take a hiatus from the progressive social commentary that has been the trademark of their prior joint ventures, and of all of Lee’s previous joints, to take a run at a big budget, pure popcorn-popping, bank-heist blockbuster, in Inside Man.
Washington stars as Detective Keith Frazier, a working class detective caught up in the case of a lifetime when a team of highly-sophisticated criminals, led by an enigmatic mastermind named Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), take a busy Manhattan bank and everyone inside of it hostage for reasons that become less and less clear the more he learns about them. Adding to his confusion is the arrival of the mysterious Madeline White (Jodie Foster) who enters the situation with purpose and privilege that clearly come from somewhere far above Frazier’s own head. As he tries to unravel the clues to discover the true agendas of all the players involved, Frazier must also come to grips with his own motivations for handling this case, and decide at what point the prospect of personal gain might begin to override his judgments as a police officer.
If the measure of a film’s worth were merely its ability to hold the viewer’s interest, Inside Man would certainly fare pretty well. But as clever as this movie appears to be throughout the majority of the duration, the payoff feels a little bit too unsurprising to leave you fully satisfied with the experience. Under Lee’s smart direction, the story unfolds with a clever boldness that will take most viewers about half way through the film to realize how he has been slapping them in the face with clues to the resolution of the siege all along the way. Unfortunately the clever storytelling may be the very source of any disappointment in this movie, as it is the subplots to the siege that become the more interesting stories but never quite deliver the goods in the end.
Grading
Story: B+
Acting: A-
Visuals: B
Originality/Innovation: C+
Enjoyability: B
DVD Extras: B
Overall: B
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