AP photo by Bernat Armanque
U.S. filmmaker Spike Lee gestures during a photo-call in Madrid, Thursday, March 16, 2006 to promote his film "Inside Man".
Washington Film Wins Fans at Box Office By Penny Lee Remick, 03.30.06
Russell GeWirtz’s mystery crime action film, “Inside Man,” wants a more potent title. The film is set in a Manhattan luxury bank where a suspected robbery is underway. Fifty culturally eclectic hostages are forced to don the painter jumpsuit used to disguise the bank raiders. The suit acts as a smokescreen to create conflict in distinguishing victims from the true culprits throughout the film. Nearby, New York police huddle and craft a game plan inside a police unit, while the intruders further usurp police by confusing the team with riddles and manual trickery.
Policeman, Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) is called upon to infiltrate and outsmart the well-organized raiders. The insiders are led by the even-keeled, and clever, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen). Washington’s character is balanced by the saint of subtext, Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor), especially during police interviews with released hostages. Washington plays a police officer with a panache for fashion, as he plays a cool hand with both the culprits and his police buddies.
The mystery thickens when Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer) calls on cosmopolitan powerhouse Madeline White (Jodie Foster) to gain access to the secured bank in order to retrieve an object that controls Case’s personhood, more than money.
The role Foster plays seems almost too remote to be maintained as a character at all. White is brought in at a crucial impasse, then seems to disappear almost altogether, gathering a lot of dust between shots. White lends a confident role model to women, despite the insidious remark made by a politician during the film, which seems an attempt to ensure that viewers recall she is, after all, just a sex object, rather than the powerful woman she plays.
On the opposite spectrum, the police team seems more realistic and less cliché than most films. In this film, the force acts like an accordion, working as a single unit making good music one moment, while deflating in discordant notes the next, yet all the while entangling the audience in group cohesion.
Director Spike Lee balances story-telling fare with action sequence, and “optional” high action scenes, which creates a story book experience dotted with fast-moving flare. For movie-goers with story predictability fatigue, this film delivers interest, humor, and variety. The film is heavy on language, and thus garners a rating of R.
