A Rollicking NYC Roller Coaster Ride that Is the Triumph of Brain Over Brawn in a Heist Film

Rating: 10/10 (30 March 2006)

"Inside Man" is terrific thriller, teasing us constantly as it deliciously delivers brains over brawn. Reveling in its very NYC atmosphere, it has much of the grittiness of "Dog Day Afternoon" crossed with the clever suspense of "The Usual Suspects".
Following Clive Owen's arresting monologue to the audience that alerts us to pay attention to the clues ("I'm only going to say this once" - though that's repeated at the end after we are realizing what he really meant), the opening scenes set up that director Spike Lee is for the first time using the clashing, unmelted pot of NYC's divergent races and immigrants not as a hortatory end in itself but to heighten and color what could have been just another perfect crime heist movie.
Reversing the trek of "The Warriors", we are immediately on a relentlessly purposeful tour of the length of Brooklyn from Coney Island through its diverse ethnic neighborhoods representing the corners of the globe to the gargoyles of Wall Street, the center of the world's financial power, all to the rollicking beat of a symbolic "Bollywood Joint" featuring Panjabi MC, a leader in the bhangra blend of dance and Indian diaspora pop music.
When we are first introduced to various ethnic types among the cops and the bank customers I was afraid that Lee was doing his broad brush stereotypes again as he did to nasty effect in "Summer of Sam", but instead it's all slyly setting up the red herrings, cul-de-sacs and final outcome in Russell Gewirtz's roller coaster ride of a debut feature script. Some of the best dialog is in pointed exchange of raw identities that almost trump the main action, whether an Albanian or Sikh or Armenian or Jewish grandmother or racist officer or sexist punk or rich WASP Park Avenue CEO, plus we see NYC's rainbows of Asians, Latinos, workers and politicians, old and young. Many of the lines are laugh out loud funny and marvelously ironic.
Owen plays on the cold bad Brit stereotype we've seen from Alan Rickman in "Die Hard" to Paul Bettany in "Firewall" before doing his version of the right thing while the smart alecky boy amusingly recalls the fresh kid inevitably nicknamed Brooklyn who is in every World War II movie troupe, as he shocks the bank robber with his violent and racist video game (played while they're sitting in the bank vault). Everybody has prejudices or pre-suppositions or a deal to make that are confused by the robbers' physical and strategic masks (coincidentally recalling the symbolic use of the Guy Fawkes' masks in "V for Vendetta") and cleverly edited shuffling of positions.
The flash forward interrogations of the hostages by a wily Denzel Washington -- who is just plain enjoying the tripping on his tongue of sharp dialog more than he had in his several other detective roles-- are jarringly integrated in with a grainy look throughout to give us revelatory clues about what is really going on to emphasize that we can't assume anything about anyone we see even when he seems just too suspicious. This is a constantly keep 'em guessing story with visual bread crumbs dribbled out for us to follow.
It's nice to see Jodie Foster play a tough broad who is a talker not an action hero, even if her smarmy fixer doesn't make 100% sense in the plot, though her nefarious negotiating in front of a flag tribute to 9/11 is a chuckle about the American Way.
Christopher Plummer is repeating an elegantly corrupt type we've seen him do many times, most recently in "Syriana", and his explication was a bit too conveniently delivered for the story. Chiwetel Ejiofor as Washington's partner and Willem Dafoe as the technocrat are underused throughout in restrained roles. While I appreciate that Washington's sexy girlfriend is given a career as a fellow cop, which is unusual for this genre, I was disappointed that she seems to be half his age. It was nice to see the usually comic Daryl "Chill" Mitchell in a small serious appearance.
The production design details of NYC accuracy are an utter delight, from real TV stations to the authentic feel of NYPD's handling of emergencies to the current Mayor's bull pen office at City Hall plus script references to real people in sports and government. Even the sound design reinforces the realistically gripping experience.
Terence Blanchard's score is much less jazzy than his other works for Lee's films and matches the action and human variety we see on the screen.
The gang's calling themselves variations of "Steve" seems like an amusing crossing of Howard Hawks with Quentin Tarantino.
The closing credits are generous in giving full attention to the very large ensemble by letting us match their personas to the actors.
While the violence is more implied than real, but still scary, the dialog is full of rampant, explicit profanity so I was surprised that folks brought very young children to a matinée.