Terrific movie for the first two thirds, then ... (spoiler at bottom)

Rating: 7/10 (28 April 2007)

For most of its length, Inside Man looks to be a great crime movie. The movie is efficient and stylish. Even the smallest characters are given real personalities and the movie has a wonderful sense of New York attitude. Denzel gives a thoughtful performance and Plummer is excellent. The script is smart.
But then, about two thirds of the way through, problems with the script begin to show up. The movie begins to seem unfocused and some of it is unconvincing and even tending towards the ludicrous. One begins to realize that Jodie's character serves no use in the story and the story itself wanders off in an odd and unconvincing direction. The final idea behind the story isn't bad so much as the execution; there is no proper setup in terms of plot or character. It really feels like the scriptwriter had an idea that he was determined to use even though he couldn't completely get a handle on it.
Still, it's fun for the most part and even though it loses a lot of momentum at the end it's still reasonably entertaining. And it's certainly worth watching.
****************SPOILER*************** Here's a small but telling example of a script problem. After this big hostage thing and standoff the cops finally get into the bank and discover nothing has actually been stolen. Then Denzel's boss tells him, just forget about the case; no one really cares. But 50 people were taken hostage, which is kidnapping and thus is a very serious offense, and it was a big news story, and just because no money was lost no one is going to be demanding police action? WTF? The movie seems to have this idea that the robbers really didn't do much wrong because they didn't steal any money (this is reinforced at the end), but that's just nuts. ****************END SPOILER***********