Why is Clive Owen in so many bland posters?
Inside ‘Inside Man’ is a bland one note heist movie desperate to bore audiences. Thankfully this generic formula flick is quelled by quality acting and an especially stylish yet subdued directing effort by Spike Lee.
At its core Inside man is a classic cops n robbers tale, kinda like Heat, and like that film the lead good and bad guys come face to face – well balaclava – on multiple occasions in this film.
Denzel Washington is effectively the public face of the law and order team as Detective Keith Frazier, though of course his side has other hangers on including his partner Detective Mitchell and Willem Dafoe as a street cop. While the only bad guy whose face we see for nearly two hours belongs to Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), his compadres are a little more reluctant to show their mugs, given that they for much of the film they are in
the process of committing a major armed robbery.
Dalton however is never shy about his role in the heist. He tells us from the film’s opening frames that he is the major conspirator, and he and his disguised team walk calmly into a major New York bank and systematically put their intricate and daring plan into motion, taking several hostages in the process.
The robbers are intimidatory but not especially violent, and their plan seems to welcome police interference and scrutiny, some of which they deflect with disdain, and the early discussions between Detective Frazier and Russell are effectively a high stakes game of cat
and mouse, with each party trying to work their own angles without incurring the wrath of the opposition.
The film cuts back and forth between the events of the crime itself and the post-gig interviews with freed hostages, with Frazier and Mitchell grilling those freed, unsure if they were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, or perhaps accomplices…
It’s not really fair to the film to move further, however I might also mention that there is a subplot involving a problem solver Madeleine White (Jodie Foster) and the Chairman of the bank under siege Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer). As it turns out this diversion
does of course dovetail into the other events in the film – it would be extraneous if they didn’t – but I feel the film wouldn’t have suffered one iota if they excised the whole bit. And it would have been a good 20 minutes shorter. Perhaps Spike felt that removing the unnecessary arc might rob his poster of two big names…
The acting is uniformly excellent, with the two leads Washington and Owen setting the benchmark even though neither is forced to stretch much beyond their normal persona – though I haven’t heard Denzel swear this much in a while. The action is minimal but effective and there are more than enough twists, turns and red herrings to keep you guessing.
While the final reveal is equally effective but implausible (many years ago I worked in a bank tiny compared to the one held up here, and they had measures in place that would have foiled Dalton), the film earns a little leeway given the quality of the build up. There will always be a place for a decent heist film. Inside Man definitely fits that description.
Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. Spike eschews his normal hooks and tricks and tones down the racial themes to aim for a more mainstream audience. With Inside Man he comes up trumps. I wish he made more like it.
