The Heist With a Trick Up its Sleeve

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2006)

Spike Lee wouldn't be the kind of director who would be called on to do this kind of film. INSIDE MAN is more on the vein of the works of David Mamet, who has tackled this genre several time with fairly clever results. However, the story of INSIDE MAN, while on the surface a basic heist inside a bank with all of the elements present, is interested less in the eventual shoot-out between cops, marshals, and the criminals, or even in a deep, co-dependent relationship between the Main Guy and the Main Cop as was the bulk of the story of DIE HARD back in 1988. INSIDE MAN is an excellent crime thriller, a puzzle that practically gives its solution in the way it's own narration evolves, but one that is strong on plot, stronger still on acting, and strongest on its gradual build-up, in which nothing is as it seems at first glance and a group of criminals may have concocted the perfect bank robbery. Clive Owen essays yet another of his dark villains (maybe his own physique is to blame; I can't see him playing a lightweight role in the vein of Cary Grant, there's just something brooding underneath that every so often explodes in dangerous rage, and I've seen it happen since CLOSER). Jodie Foster, cast totally against type, plays a powerful woman who has a degree of mystery about her and who has reached a point in her life where she can make deals with the Devil, call it a monster, and walk out, smiling. Her Madeline White is anything but -- she's a sneering, calculating, bitch with her hands firmly planted in the steering wheel of power -- and it's great to see Foster finally break out of her "altruistic heroine" or "victim" role for once! Denzel Washington, however, is the drive of the movie, and practically skips his way through his scenes like it was recess and he was impersonating Shaft -- and his character is given quite the kinky side, a rarity in crime dramas, but a nice touch courtesy of Lee himself. Chiwetel Ejiofor (KINKY BOOTS), Willem Dafoe, and Christopher Plummer have small but noteworthy parts.