Clever, witty, cool! =)

Rating: 8/10 (10 May 2010)

Spike Lee is back to his unusual directing ways in this completely enigmatic psycho logic thriller, depicting the story of a tense hostage bank robbery in the heart of New York City. Gone are the times of Lee's glory days with cheesy puzzles for the audience to figure out the killer in the nineties when that was socially acceptable, therefore Inside Man is a more darker, politically serious film that grips the audience with the relationship between both the ol' cop and robber. Denzel isn't getting any thinner or younger, but manages to hold his own as the smart, witty detective surrounded by his bumbling lieutenants and marriage crazy girlfriend. And if these problems weren't bad enough, he has a masked, husky voiced Clive Owen to deal with as well. Out foxing him at every corner; Lee has deliberately made Owen's character all most impervious to any of Detective Frazier's (Washington) offers, only heightening the suspense between the two. The script is monumentally clever, taking the audience through a series of rhetorical questions and enigmas for them to figure out by the end of the feature, and unlike every other crime drama, this one actually makes sense. I mean anyone can escape by building a secret room behind a wall in the bank and living there for two days on nothing but a tiny rug sack full of clothes and water. Okay, perhaps the ending is a little far fetched, but it makes sense in principal; not everything has to be extremely realistic ya know. A part of you is on the German-artifact stealing Clive's side, due to his extreme wit and severely cool personality; he's just an instantly lovable character. It will make you want him. Even men. But away from the homo-eroticness of Owen, this film is dubiously clever and will make you want to watch it again and again. However don't get any plans to rob a bank, you will fail, you just don't have the cool of Clive....