Therein Lies the Rub

Rating: 6/10 (24 March 2006)

Greetings again from the darkness. "Dog Day Afternoon" will forever be the film in which all bank heist/hostage negotiation movies will be compared. "DDA" featured a brilliant and mesmerizing performance by Al Pacino as the bank robber. "Inside Man" focuses less on the bank robber played by a mostly covered up Clive Owen, and more on the negotiator played by Denzel Washington.
Although we see little of Clive's face (other than the opening and closing segment) he does a nice job of playing the cool as a cucumber thief with mostly his voice. Denzel plays the slightly erratic, career on the line cop, whose skills few have confidence in. Add to the mix an egotistical, intellectual mercenary played by Jodie Foster (who gets to flash her near perfect 43 year old legs), and a powerful Bank Chairman played by Christopher Plummer and director Spike Lee has quite a loaded gun with which to play.
Overall the bank heist and hostage stuff is thrilling and full of suspense. The film loses a bit with the whole Christopher Plummer storyline that is really kind of hard to believe. Also, the obvious Spike Lee moments will make you cringe, but he still has a great eye for the city. The song that plays over the opening and closing credits is amazing, but most of the film score is flawed. Due to the painters uniforms and masks, very few in the supporting cast stand out, but as you can guess, Denzel is fine carrying the star power load.