Lee goes mainstream and succeeds

Rating: 7/10 (30 March 2006)

Spike Lee's most mainstream movie to date starts off as a standard popcorn heist movie, then turns into a character study whilst throwing some nice twists for good measure. It works most of the time, managing to squeeze in a couple of post-9/11 political points, but by and large this is much lighter on the racial Leeisms of films gone by, instead offering us a superior genre movie stop gap so that Lee can now go off and do the serious stuff he yearns to.
The cast is one of those ultra-reliable "do this in their sleep" line ups featuring the wonder that is Denzil Washington doing his thing as the hostage negotiator sent to try and solve this situation, Clive Owen, whose American accent is still taking it's final exams, is otherwise having the time of his life as the criminal mastermind hoping to score the bank out of all that it's worth and there is fantastic support from Jodie Foster, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Willem Defoe and Christopher Plummer.
Half way through inside man the film skips to post-heist scenes of various hostages being interviewed about what they do or don't know. This then sets in motion an intriguing tale of what actually takes place during the heist. It appears as though the robbery may be far more complex than first thought by Detective Keith Frazier. The bank's owner appears to have his own dark secrets that may be dug up by the robbers, and sends Ms Fix-It (Foster) to negotiate it further. We are also shown the nasty side to the supposed good guys; Lee adopts a post-9/11 attitude, dealing with racial stereotypes of Asian New Yorkers. One such unlucky fellow is thought to be an Arabic terrorist when he emerges from the bank as a freed hostage, only to tell everyone that he's actually a Sikh.
The main problem with Inside Man is that as it goes on, the plot holes become more evident. By the final third it seems as though the story has been wrapped up, yet we are still here. At 129 minutes it outstays it's welcome, but for all its faults it is still a darn good, very tense thriller, with a knockout cast and New York maestro director.