Spike Lee should "sell out" more often.

Rating: 10/10 (30 September 2018)

"Inside Man" convinces me that Spike Lee would actually be a much more effective social activist if he would just get off of his insufferable soap box, stop incessantly speaking down to white people, and simply make movies showing black people every bit the equal of white people. This is really nothing more than a superior popcorn movie, but I think it's more likely to actually ease racial tensions than any of Lee's films that are much more intentionally intended to do so. I'm not even going to pretend to hide anything here. I'm a well read and educated white guy who od'd a long time ago on Spike Lee's simple-minded lectures on the problems of race relations in America and pretty much all of his associated work. Lee's interviews always seem to indicate that he believes he's making brilliant, original observations, but I've never heard him say anything that hasn't been said before. Now, on the other hand, I'm sure that Lee would say he "sold out" when he made this big-budget, conventional, Hollywood blockbuster, even though it's leading character was Denzel Washington and other black actors played significant roles. I, on the other hand, have to say that I think it's the slickest heist movie I've ever seen, even better than "The Usual Suspects". It's easily my favorite Spike Lee film, and I don't think the plot made one meaningful misstep the whole time. It was never difficult to suspend disbelief, and the storyline never bogged. Simply casting black people in favorable leading roles works better with me personally than constantly hammering on me for my lack of melanin, which I get really, really tired of. In the same way that not all black people are violent, sociopathic, drug dealers, not all white people are truly deep-down racists suffering from all kinds of "implicit" biases and relentlessly expressing "microaggressions". So, while overall I've had way too much of Lee's intellectually trivial sermonizing for a lifetime, and I think that nowadays he's only insincerely inflaming further racial division (as if we needed more) to further inflate his already monstrous ego (Clooney, a white guy, does the same thing using other excuses) rather than to actually benefit society, I fully endorse "Inside Man" as the the best film of its type ever made.