Entertaining overall, but slow in the middle

Rating: 7/10 (10 April 2006)

I mostly liked this Spike Lee film, but I wondered early on if Denzel's cop character was going to turn out to be the real "Inside Man". He did get a gift from the genius bank robber at the end. Why? It was probably a token from the genius crook, who by that act was paying a smart detective handsomely for the rare challenge to his brilliance, or maybe for not being smart enough to catch him? With Spike, it has to be the former. And, actually, in the end, the detective actually did the bank robber's dirty work for him that cost the Big Cheese dearly and maybe even bought him down, so the detective worked out to be the brilliant crook's Inside Man after all. Pretty formulaic, but sharp and engrossing. Denzel was his usual very impressive, cool cat self and Clive Owen as the genius crook was terrific.
Jodie Foster played a powerful rich bitch very well, one who rubbed viewer noses in something smelly that we already know, that the filthy rich are very different than the rest of us(maybe it's the money and the power and all the rest( and can do what they want to the rest of us. She did provide an important connection to the real bad rich guy of the story who paid her well for her slick work, and her bitchchick role was a great choice for the fixer between Denzel's cop and the Very Big bad banker. I liked the way that part was pulled off and the creative and suspenseful conclusion. In the end I thought it was worth the slow pace and lightweight violence that dragged it down midway.
Spike Lee's boring and out of date racist drone of the white guys always being the bad guys and the black guys always being the good guys is getting real old. Not very realistic today, just like a lot of this film. But, it was a good story of a smart and creative caper and that is enough to make me recommend it.