Inside man, 2006

Inside man, 2006
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, Christopher Plummer



Inside man in short: From a cell, a man tells us he has planned the perfect bank robbery; he invites us to watch. An efficient gang enters a Manhattan bank, locks the doors, and takes hostages. They work deliberately, without haste. Detective Frazier is assigned to negotiate, but half his mind is occupied with the corruption charges he is facing. The bank's president has something to protect in a safe deposit box, so he brings in Madaline, a high-power broker with a hidden agenda. With an army of police surrounding the bank, the thief, the cop, and the plutocrat's fixer enter high-stakes negotiations. Why are the robbers asking for a plane, if they are so competent and they know they won't get one? Why aren't they in more of a hurry? If the job's perfect, why is the thieves' leader in a cell?

Stage: home theatre, TV selection of the evening


Preps: seeing this many times, it is no challenge to see a good piece again and search for even deeper theme.


Reality: The perfect bank job, with a strange line of twitches, where sometimes the robbers run the game, on the other occasions, police. The time in the movie jumps from the time of theft, to the time after, and in between it involves the crimes from WW2 and keeping evidence from that time in the safe deposit boxes. The action, victims, resolving the crime and looking (pursuing) the crime from WW2 that just until the end doesn't get resolved.

The crime is profound, thought up to every last detail, however the villain is not accepted as a villain in the eyes of the viewer. He's too soft to be commiting a crime, however, does a great deal or goes a line extra to show (or to make it look like) he is a true bad person. But the observer of the movie will not take him as that, because Spike Lee does an extra project of making him look decent and human.

THere are some parallell stories, like making a person that is obviously someone from Middle East, a criminal right away and throwing some bad words immediately when he shows up, complaining that he gets a shitty treatment wherever he is just because his origin. Those stories make this piece extraordinary. Spike Lee's efforts with the camera are superb and his excellence shows also in the defilee, where all the main protagonists get their moment on the stage.

My personal rating: 8,0 (one of stronger pieces, in this genre, refreshened by Jodie Foster and Washington in his premium role as the guy that solves the day. A good piece to see once more).


Inside man on IMDB