Spike Lee: the sound and the fury

Rating: 5/10 (5 August 2007)

So, audiences and critics alike seemed very happy to judge this movie as Spike Lee's finest. What a laugh! I mean, there's some intelligence here, without question, and humor too. But, Spike Lee's best? What happened to Malcolm X? Do the Right Thing? Clockers or even Bamboozled? See, the main problem with Inside Man is that the film's turns aren't half as dramatic as the film's makers want you to feel they are. Lee simultaneously draws upon and contrasts the film against old heist classics such as Dog Day Afternoon. As a result, we get a film with edges far, far more interesting than its basics are. We get the Sikh bank worker who complains about his rights being violated and the young boy with the ultra-violent video game that the character Dalton (Clive Owen) is shocked by, and so on. At least the film's denouement is full of interesting bits that help compensate for the heist portion's ineffectiveness. Nonetheless, this is Inside Man: confusing, uneventful, and not half as important as it would like to be.