Great!

Rating: 9/10 (17 April 2006)

I really enjoyed this movie. The actors were good. The story was good and there were plenty of funny lines that I guffawed at. Denzel Washington was great as the NY cop who had to negotiate with Clive Owen, also great, who was holding hostages in a bank. Spike Lee's direction was superb. There were no throw away scenes. Take for example the cell phone scene where the criminals told everyone to dump their phones into a sack. That could have been handled very differently but it was prolonged and stretched out to provide a suspenseful scene. The incident didn't really have much to do with the main plot but it was handled so well you were on the edge of your seat waiting to see what would happen. There were many scenes like that. Ordinary events, well ordinary for this type of movie, were treated with respect and used to provide entertainment and not just thrown away. This is a movie that you would want to see again after you know the whole plot just to see how they went about the caper. Another scene I enjoyed was the interview with one of the women about section 34DD. The tension created with this small scene was wonderful. Will he look or not? I thought the movie was well filmed, well written and well acted. See this movie. It was a delight.