Promise, this is not as farfetched as it sounds: Spike Lee’s “Inside Man” is like “American Idol” contestant Chris Daughtry. I’ll elaborate later. For the moment, let’s just say this taut bank-heist caper rocks. Mightily.
A cast of smooth operators and a dynamic script by newcomer Russell Gewirtz keep it rolling. At just over two hours, “Inside Man” earns every minute of our tense curiosity.
The film poses, then takes its own sweet time answering, this question: How could master thief Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) let his elaborately planned robbery devolve into a hostage situation in which 50 New Yorkers become like cards in a three-card monte game, divided and shuffled from room to room?
Or has he?
Denzel Washington gives a jazz-cool turn as New York City hostage negotiator Keith Frazier. At the beginning of the movie, he’s in trouble with Internal Affairs. Seems $140,000 in perp money has gone afield. He doesn’t give in to worry. At least not about that. He frets more about his girlfriend pressing him to pop the question.
Then there’s Jodie Foster’s behind-the-scenes power broker, Madeline White, who brings a wind-chill factor to the proceedings. Fixer for the elite, she arrives at the cordoned Lower Manhattan bank with an agenda very different from Frazier’s.
Foster keeps her coutured character poised on a point between ambiguous and dark. Will she tip over? Maybe it’s Madeline’s carved confidence, her perfected smile, but Foster seldom gets to whet her edge this sharply.
And here, as in “Syriana,” Christopher Plummer continues to stride like a titan of industry through his roles. Plummer’s Arthur Case is the founder of the bank under siege. He hires Madeline to end-run the cops and intervene with the robbers. But there’s also something in his safety-deposit box that requires retrieval. He contends it’s nothing of value, except to him. Riiight.
Characters at cross purposes. A robber whose demands don’t quite add up. Hostages who become suspects when the robbers force them to don the same disguises they’re wearing. There’s no red herring in “Inside Man.” There’s a school of them.
At the start of the film, thief Russell looks at the camera and says, “Pay strict attention to what I say, because I choose my words very carefully, and I never repeat myself.”
There’s menace but also a cheeky collegiality to his tone. Which isn’t the same as saying we’re rooting for him, only that these characters treat us like the movie-savvy adults we are.
Lee never reaches for the obvious genre device. “Inside Man” doesn’t stoop to conquer – us or the box office. Likely it will do both. Robbing us of some clues, it rewards us with others.
Lee and cinematographer Matthew Labitique forgo flashbacks but employ a grain-rich fast-forward. If Frazier and his partner Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are talking with a certain hostage, it must mean some captives will survive. Whew. Yet knowing that does little to lessen our anxiety about what has happened.
This constant bait-and-switch works just as well in other ways too. When Frazier and Mitchell arrive at the cordoned scene, Captain John Darius (Willem Dafoe) is already there with his team. Yes, the filmmakers could have teased some point about a disgruntled officer (white) and the detective he must answer to (black). But why? Darius and Frazier’s understated tension has as much to do with competing methods as old wounds.
This is New York, baby, and few directors get the comedy and conflict of that city the way Spike Lee can. So a loud woman on her cell keeps barking at the Asian guy who keeps trying to get a look at her. An older Jewish woman refuses to strip down to her undies, even with a gun in her face.
From the opening scenes to its delicious resolution, “Inside Man” pleases. It teases.
Which brings us back to “American Idol.”
For a couple of months now we have been treated by the studios to movies that ply genre and flash star wattage. “Freedomland” had Samuel L. Jackson. Harrison Ford grows not-so-gracefully older in “Firewall.” If Bruce Willis stumbled in “16 Blocks,” it wasn’t his fault so much as the plotholes created by the script.
Now, in struts “Inside Man.”
I feel like Simon Cowell saying the unthinkable week after week: “Inside Man,” you show us what a real Hollywood movie should be. You humble the competition.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.
*** 1/2 | “Inside Man”
R for language and some violent images|2 hours, 9 minutes|CAPER THRILLER|Directed by Spike Lee; written by Russell Gewirtz; photography by Matthew Libatique; starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor|Opens today at area theaters
