Spike Lee's technical gifts as a filmmaker are often overshadowed by his films' confrontational tone and controversial subject matter. Lee doesn't set aside his grand theme, the jangling racial friction of New York City life, in "Inside Man," but he bends it to serve the purposes of a slick, classy and clever bank heist movie.
Clever, did I say? Too clever by half at times, as Clive Owen's Shakespeare-spouting mastermind effortlessly outfoxes the authorities massed at the Manhattan bank he has seized. Inside the bank are a few dozen hostages. Thirty, 35, 40, what does it matter? It matters.
The thief isn't a trigger-happy thug, but a cerebral crook who turns up his nose at one young prisoner's taste in violent video games. He doesn't even seem especially interested in the stacks of currency in the vaults. Once he's inside the building, he seems content to sit tight. Taunting the cops and (in a direct-to-camera opening monologue) the audience to make sense of his plan, he has the cool confidence of a grand master blitzing a chump at speed chess. The script, by first-timer Russell Gewirtz, has the same cocky, catch-me-if-you-can attitude.
On the outside is Denzel Washington as a detective who sees the case as a chance to move past a bad bust in which he's suspected of pilfering $140,000 of cash evidence. Washington's cop is folksy, dedicated and bright, but in over his head, and possibly being set up to take the fall if the siege ends in bloodshed.
Jodie Foster plays a mysterious negotiator hired by the bank's chairman to open a direct line to the robbers. When this cobra in Chanel informs Washington that the situation really calls for an officer at a higher pay grade, he makes it a point of personal pride to prove her wrong. As the bank's owner, Christopher Plummer's concern about the thieves carries a guarded note of personal anxiety.
I enjoyed the film so much that its flaws were annoyances rather than deal-breakers. The screenplay isn't quite as brilliant as it thinks, hinging on a far-fetched decision to safeguard incriminating papers rather than destroy them. The film could be more crisply paced; at 128 minutes it's a reel too long. Terence Blanchard's big, brassy, Bond-influenced musical score pushes its way into your consciousness, and not in a good way. Washington makes the odd decision to aw-shucks his way through a role that calls for a spine of steel.
But for all that, "Inside Man" marries some ingenious caper ideas to Lee's superb feel for ethnic politics. The cops can't tell Armenians from Albanians, or Arab terrorists from Sikh bank employees, and understanding the difference would help them solve the case. Lee's New York isn't a melting pot but a pressure cooker. Under every line of dialogue is a silent grumble of tribal frustration. Washington has to negotiate not just with his quarry, but with his brother officers, his superiors at the precinct, his girlfriend, the financier and his amoral fixer, even the mayor.
It's those additional layers of complication that make "Inside Man" so entertaining and such a canny portrait of 21st-century city life. Everywhere you look, standoffs.
