George Clooney isn't fooling anyone. In a town populated with fragile egos and fueled by insecurity, nobody's proud to be out of touch.

The need to hit one out of the park in Hollywood after writing, producing or directing a dud can be compelling indeed when important people stop returning your phone calls.

Director Spike Lee has never felt that kind of pressure. He makes small films for smaller segments of society that invariably have small receipts.

But after his last effort She Hate Me made a whopping $366,037 domestically — unheard of for any film, let alone comedy — even he must have been sweating.

No surprise then the aloof ethnic artiste chose the mainstream commercial caper flick Inside Man for his next project.

The story is ... actually fairly impossible to relate without giving something important away. And there's a lot to give away.

Let's just say it's a heist film. Mostly. Driven by vicious antagonists and sympathetic protagonists. Sort of. And the clear message of the film is that crime doesn't pay. But don't quote me on that.

Come to think of it, we only know for sure there's something going on at a New York City bank involving hostages, masked gunmen, a whole lot of cops outside and a whole lot of political maneuvering both inside and out.

We're also fairly sure Denzel Washington is the cop in charge and British hunk Clive Owen is behind one of the masks. Which of the two, in fact, is calling the shots ultimately is also tantalizingly unclear.

Spike Lee actually deserves little credit for how riveting it all is. First-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz has written a bulletproof script to make any hack come off like Alfred Hitchcock. It could become Exhibit A in the ongoing film-school debate over who really "authors" a movie, the writer or director.

Gewirtz's screenplay is exceptionally sharp, funny and elusive, constructed with a remarkable economy that delivers only what we want and need to know precisely when we want and need to know it.

In a day when movies continue to push the two-and-a-half hour envelope in a vain attempt to give us our $10's worth, here's the rare film that justifies its two-hour-plus run time with substance.

It's by far the best caper film in years, right up there with 2001's criminally underappreciated The Score, with Edward Norton and Robert De Niro.

Yet, author or not, Lee hasn't made a film entirely without his stamp.

Somewhere to the left of Clooney politically, Lee has cast Washington as a character written white to amp up scenes involving post-Sept. 11 "racism" in New York City.

This film also apparently marks the official end of sainthood for the NYPD, depicted largely as a cadre of dim but likable flatfoots and trigger-happy bigots. Lee reportedly added at least one scene not in the script — yet another bit involving a turbaned Sikh abused by reactionary white folk — to further push his agenda. (Hey, I'm as tired of writing about politics in the "entertainment" industry as you are of reading about it. It's just unavoidable these days.)

Lee also seems a bit lazy with the fundamentals. A few scenes are shot so over-zealously in the over-used steadicam technique, dialogue is at times hard to track. An overly fastidious resolution to the story also comes close to taxing our patience.

Minor distractions all.

The movie's social commentary — some of which conservatives will in fact cheer — actually makes for an intriguing mix that, in the end, elevates the whole. Think Crash re-envisioned by Hitchcock.

Clive Owen's own unpredictable mix of villainy and chivalry as the Houdini-like master criminal elevates it further.

The film is also built partly on a "be sure your sins will find you out" theme that places it, arguable at least, on the right side of things in terms of its worldview. Particularly when contrasted with a lawless film like "V for Vendetta," with its radical pro-anarchy, neo-pagan glorification of murder in a "good" cause. More importantly for Lee, with a little help from his friends, he seems to have pulled off the perfect smoke-and-mirrors job himself — magically reappearing on speed dials across Southern California in the blink of an eye.