Be Prepared For Lots of Surprises!

Rating: 9/10 (23 September 2007)

"Inside Man" qualifies as the slickest movie that "Do The Right Thing" director Spike Lee has ever made. A criminal mastermind Dalton Russell (Clive Owen of "Sin City") and his cohorts masquerade as painters, enter a Manhattan bank during business hours, take hostages,force their hostages to strip to their underwear and then make don the same outfits that Dalton and his crew are wearing. Meanwhile, a cop on the beat sends out the alarm when he notices something suspicious at the bank and the N.Y.P.D. surround the building. N.Y.P.D. Captain John Darius (Willem Dafoe of "Mr. Bean's Holiday") deploys his army of blue uniforms and erects a command post not far from the front door. Detective Keith Frazier (a bald-headed Denzel Washington of "Mo Better Blues") is surprised when his boss sends him in to serve as the hostage negotiator. It seems that the regular hostage negotiator is on vacation, so Frazierwho is under suspicion for a missing cache of lootgets the assignment. Meanwhile, the man who built the bank, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer of "The Sound of Music"), hires a go-between, cold-as-ice Madeleine White (Jodie Foster of "Taxi Driver"), to protect his interests, particularly the contents of safe deposit box number 392. Ms. White persuades the mayor to let her enter the bank and chat with Dalton about his options.
Initially, "Inside Man" shapes up to be a top-notch, perfect heist thriller, but it isn't what it appears. At least, Dalton and his people are not out to rob the bank in terms of money. Instead, they set out to expose the chairman of the board of directors of the bank, Mr. Case, who has a deadly secret that he wants to keep from the public. Namely, Mr. Case had some suspicious dealings with the Nazis involving Holocaust victims. Call it a cold case that turns red hot before fadeout.
"Inside Man" puts Spike Lee into distinctly different surroundings. This is a big movie with logistics, not Spike's usual small production with a straight-forward agenda. He spends more time throwing red herrings at us than taking us through the permutations of a hostage negotiation thriller. "Blind Justice" TV scenarist Russell Gerwirtz has constructed a thriller with a labyrinth. Not unsurprisingly, the principals pay homage to director Sidney Lument's hostage thriller "Dog Day Afternoon" when Dalton and Frazier talk about getting buses to transport his hostages and crew to the airport. Neither Lee nor Gerwirtz set aside much time for character development, aside from Det. Frazier's pursuit of a promotion, his relationship with his yearning for marriage girlfriend, and the mystery of the missing money from a previous assignment. The Jodie Foster character is as anonymous as Clive Owen's Dalton Russell. "Inside Man" is the kind of movie where you have no idea what is going on the entire time until the ending, which is pretty clever but not as satisfying as you might have expected given the set-up.
The film benefits from first-rate photography, editing,and surroundings, but Terence Blanchard's orchestral score is very overbearing and intrusive at times. The structure of the action is uncomfortable as Lee and Gerwirtz splice in scenes of Frazier interrogating hostages released from the bank during the situation. Be prepared for lots of surprises. This is Spike Lee's best movie in terms of a big Hollywood production since "Do The Right Thing." He brings up racism only in minor scenes. The only other complaint is that--along with those interrogation scenes that interrupt the flow of the action, "Inside Man" could have been about 10 minutes leaner without losing any of its considerable punch.