"Why don't you take a picture, I'll bend down and pick up a pencil if you like"

Rating: 8/10 (27 March 2006)

Clever Clive Owen's got a plan to rob a bank and he duly does but strangely having broken in with his team, steals nothing and takes the customers hostage and waits it out while Detective Denzel Washington tries to fathom the whole thing with the police outside. Meanwhile Jodie Foster gets a call from bank owner Christopher Plummer and is ordered to safeguard the contents of a safe deposit box lieing inside the bank's vault This is relatively conventional fare from Spike Lee  heavily literate in 70's heist thrillers, indeed Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon get name checked during it's tense, carefully layered running time. This is Lee's easiest Joint to ingest in quite some time but easy shouldn't be confused with simple because Inside Man is intelligent, thoughtfully plotted stuff bolstered by the fine interplay between Owen and Washington. It works because it resembles numerous other similarly themed offerings, the aforementioned Pacino flicks included but subverts such expectations by copying the setup and then refusing to go to any of the usual places. This means you've often jumped ahead thinking you know what's going to transpire only to find Clive Owen's gun in your facemetaphorically speaking of course. Lee's strength has always been his instinctive understanding of community conflict and social difference  here used to great effect, particularly in fleshing out the multi-ethnic characters that populate the bank and notably in the tense relationship between Washington's tec and Foster's high at heel troubleshooter who's as rotten as a week old corpse but a nice contrast with Denzel's honest but rough round the edges rozzer. A fine script by Russell Gewirtz is done justice by a director with two firm hands on the material and a nice steady grip on the tension. A highly satisfying and often stylish night in the cinema for those of you looking for a meaty retooled slice of hard boiled New York Americana.