Mildly intelligent cat-and-mouse game, but more than a little 'standard'

Rating: 6/10 (3 August 2006)

One day, an unidentified group of robbers lead by Dalton Russel (Clive Owen), dressed in painter's suits, walk into the Manhattan Trust on Wall Street. They set up a bank robbery, taking fifty hostages and have them strip down to their underwear and into similar painter suits. Inside Man zooms in between this hostage situation and the NYPD hostage negotiator Keith Frazer (Denzel Washington), rendering Inside Man into an enjoyable and well-paced heist thriller.
It is evident that Inside Man is Spike Lee's more commercial and safe feat, taking us away from the gritty crime-infested streets of racial prejudice in films like Summer of Sam, Do The Right Thing and Jungle Fever, and into the high-profile banks of Wall Street where corruption and deceit escalate as the film progresses. By endowing the film and setting with an air of class and upper-class elitism, he thereby showcases his versatility as a director, because this completely different from any film of his I have ever seen. Lee stills interweaves Inside Man with the odd racial issue, as is his trademark, but it seems he treats this as a mandatory inclusion, touching upon it but not really exploring it or giving it much importance.
Inside Man is a very standard crime thriller, not just for Spike Lee, but as a heist-film in general; it has all the necessary plot twists and the intelligence of a cat-and-mouse game, but it is nothing special. Anyone but Clive Owen as the bank robber would have satisfied, because he still sounds like a bored photocopier with one eye on the clock for the pubs opening and is altogether incapable of projecting any charisma or screen-presence in Inside Man. Instead, Denzel Washington is left to facilitate the action by himself and he just about makes it. A completely decent, often entertaining crime thriller... but please, Spike -- stick to what you're really good at in the future.
6 out of 10