Spike Lee toying with the conventions and non-conventions of an overly codified genre... for our greatest delight and excitement!

Rating: 8/10 (6 October 2019)

If a movie deals with a crisis, it better offers a proper resolution. This is why hostage movies have always been unnerving experiences to me. I'm not too brave whether in a good or a bad way, so I'm more likely to emphasize with the hostages and one victim can be one too many.
"Inside Man" is a heist film whose perfectionist tone is set from the start and so is its kinship with "Dog Day Afternoon" (Lee even included a hostage named Miriam, played by the same actress three decades before and the same actor playing the pizza delivery-man). But while in Lumet's classic, Pacino stumbled with the gift box to get the rifle out and one of the accomplices chickened out foreshadowing the disaster to be- here we have four robbers fully masked, deactivating the cameras, undressing the hostages, giving them the same uniforms they wear and proving organization-wise that the comparison with "Dog Day" will only extend to the frantic media coverage.
One of the robbers, named Russell, is played by Clive Owen. He introduces us to the story with the premise that he's made a perfect heist. I was wondering what he meant by 'perfect' but I assumed it had to be clean and that caught my attention. Indeed, while there's a general consensus that we must know the villains mean business and won't take any chances (security guards are always the first victims and over the course of the robbery you have a smart guy who wants to be the hero), "Inside Man" made me decide that there shall not be any civilian death. Why? Because a/I took Russell at his word and believed there would be no civilian deaths b/ even the security guard wasn't killed (a rarity) and c/ the most significant defiance to the robbers' authority went unpunished.
So there's clearly a sense of misleading that emerges from the first operational minutiae, which it's not surprising from a Spike Lee film. While the director is mostly known for his racism-themed and originally crafted films, here he shows his talent in toying with the viewers' expectations and subvert many tropes of a genre that has been codified to the point of dogmatic requirements. Besides, isn't it more thrilling to have protagonists as competent as their counterparts? On that level, "Inside Man" is still closer to "Dog Day Afternoon" than "Die Hard" (which I love).
And as Frazier, the man in charge, Washington plays a focused and rather relaxed cop who understands quickly that there's something unusual about the robbery... so unusual that he's got to understand the robbery to better stop it, he doesn't need men or weaponry, what he needs is time.And that's one of the first hints that the heist has been engineered with the smallest detail in mind, because time is precisely what Russell and his team needs but it shouldn't be their call but the cops'. And since we deal with smart men, it doesn't take time long for Frazier to realize how convenient it is that Russell gives him the time he needs, whether through false tracks involving a recorded foreign language or a riddle à la Simon Gruber that the team (including Chewitel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe) still debate after the phone call.
Therefore, Frazier's issue is the following: is Russell stalling or bluffing? The robbery turns out an exciting poker-game where the cards are finally laid at the end. The catch is that the robbery is so captivating that I was wondering about the purpose of the Christopher Plummer part. Ebert kept criticizing it because of the suspension of disbelief regarding his age, I could forgo that element. What bothered me was the importance given to that plot device at a moment where the focus was the hostages, and such a big deal was made about the involvement of the fixer, played by Jodie Foster and some mysterious case she got to take back from the safe that. Naturally, that had to be more than a detail and the script ties the plot together at the end and allows the subplot to give the big one its overdue pay-off... and if the level of excitement is nowhere close to the cops vs. robbers, Plummer and Foster are as pivotal to the story as Washington and Owen.
Once again, Lee is some trickster because he seems to have made the film like Owen orchestrated his plan, anticipating the reactions and questionings from the viewers. When Frazier believes Russell's stalling and provokes Owen, the scene is followed by its biggest shock, one that could almost ruin my enjoyment, except for the fact that it served its purpose whether you think of the film's plot or the robbers, which are quit the same. The film's ending reveals the final details of the robbery and justifies the use of a clever editing that consisted of hostages' post-robbery. Over the course of the film, I was wondering why they were all asked whether thy took part to the heist, and then something hit me, why shouldn't they? How about that being part of the plan?
The editing might be the film's masterstroke (which is saying a lot) because we've seen heist movies before, some made great dramas, other great action pictures, but how many robberies are told like a 'mystery' film? At the end, we're not just impressed by the genius of the plan, but the way Lee reinvented the genre using unconventional elements and yet relying on conventions. Not your typical Spike Lee joint but a terrific thriller, served by a fine performance from Denzel Washington.