Great cast and direction fighting against a truly bad script

Rating: 5/10 (30 November 2006)

First of all, I have to say I have never seen a Spike Lee film that I didn't like. There's always something interesting to look at or think about. I also always like to see Denzel Washington being directed by Lee - Lee seems to bring some quality out in him. In this film, it means Washington manages to make his rather drab character interesting. And Clive Owen was good. There was a lot of comment about how he spends most of the film with his face almost fully concealed. Well, as Johnny Knoxville has demonstrated, it is possible to convey emotion while in a HazMat suit (Jackass fans will know what I mean) and Owen does admirably here. And a brief mention for Chiwetel Ejiofor, whom I last saw in "Serenity" to great effect, who makes a fine job of what is basically an "I'm with him" role.
Then there's Jodie Foster and Christopher Plummer. Just goes to show even consummate professionals cannot turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. The scriptwriter had one brilliant idea, then he cobbled together bits and pieces to pad out the film.
If you think I've misjudged him, can you answer these questions for me? Why would Plummer's character have kept such damning material at all, let alone in a safety deposit box at his own bank? Didn't he have a safe at home? And how exactly was Foster's character supposed to deal with this situation "discreetly", with the villains holed up in the bank and the media and the public watching every move? Don't tell me nobody knew who she was and, believe me, police are the biggest gossips in the world. Now, if she had organised her own team of burglars to break in and quietly lift the documents while Clive Owen's bunch were looking the other way, that would have made some sense.
And, lastly, can we have a moratorium on Nazi subplots? The way things are going, the next generation may grow up, thinking the Holocaust is a mythical events and the Nazis no more real than Robin Hood or King Arthur. The Chief Rabbi of Britain wrote about the "instrumentality of the Holocaust" and how it is so often used as an shortcut to add a frisson of real evil to otherwise mundane situations. There are lots of other ways for rich men to be wicked without invoking the Holocaust. Scriptwriting is supposed to be creative - so create, imagine or just look at the front pages of the daily newspapers, if you must. More than enough material there without invoking an event which caused the suffering and death of millions of people.