Surprising bank heist flick from Spike Lee

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2007)

I missed the first 20 minutes or so of this film so that may have contributed to my inability to follow some details of the plot. I get the impression, though, that it was pretty complicated to begin with. And there seems to have been some elisions here and there. (What, exactly, is the significance of the diamond ring?) Basically, a gang of thieves takes over a bank and holds hostages. It is to be "the perfect bank robbery." When you hear a phrase like that, used in all seriousness, you must cringe.
As it turns out, however, it's not really a robbery at all but rather a scheme to expose the bank's founder and owner for the money-grubbing opportunistic scoundrel he was when he played footsies with the Nazis in order to come into possession of some valuables taken from victims of the genocide. The robbers escape without detection and the lead detective (Denzel Washington) alerts the mayor of New York to the nefarious history of the bank's founder (Christopher Plummer).
Lee has more smoothly integrated white folks and African-Americans than in some of his earlier movies. And he has turned the police into good guys for a change. To be sure, when all of the hostages are released and come storming out the bank's front door screaming, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!", and the officer-in-charge (Willem DaFoe) shouts "Stand down!" into his radio, the assembled cops open fire for a minute or two anyway. Firing into the crowd, they MUST be hitting people and yet no one is hurt or killed. I suppose this is related to an earlier suggestion by DaFoe that they use rubber bullets, even though this is never made clear.
But then a lot of the story takes unexpected twists and seems jagged, the way life is, rather than the way movies are. "He won't execute any of the hostages," Washington announces firmly, "because he's not the type." Next scene, we see the principal heavy shoot a hostage in the head. And when offered a promotion as part of a deal to cover up the bank owner's scandalous past, Washington seriously considers it. Everybody else is going to get something out of it and he might as well get his.
The performances are uniformly good, as they generally are under Spike Lee's direction. And Lee has an impeccable eye for camera placement and movement. He uses one or two extremely effective overhead shots and is given to angles that turn individuals into masses. Jody Foster, in a relatively small part, gives her most confident performance in years. Clive Owen as the gang leader is a paragon of tranquility throughout, but he has evidently been told to keep his eyes wide open and never blink, a tired cliché.
The villain of the piece is Christopher Plummer, head of a bank, filthy rich, and white. And yet even his crimes are mitigated, though not excused. He has insight. "I sold my soul to the devil," he says, "and I've spent my life trying to buy it back." He's turned philanthropist in his later years and has gone about doing good, as John D. Rockefeller did.
In "Do the Right Thing," Lee's DP was Ernest R. Dickerson and he did a splendid job except for a few lapses. He seems to have been caught up in current trends and lost sight of his responsibility to the viewer. Most of the movie is shot in darkness with neon-blue highlights. The images are so high in contrast that in the interrogation room they turn almost black and white. He uses a "Vertigo" zoom twice, without point, and he succumbs in one shot to the loathsome current fad of strapping the camera to the front of the actor, so that the images are jerky and disorienting.
The script could have been nothing more than another genre piece, an imitation "Dog Day Afternoon." Instead it's a rather different take on a rather old idea.
Worth seeing.