Inside Man is the latest full length feature from Spike Lee. With this film Lee enters into more of a mainstream Hollywood zone. Lee is certainly a talented filmmaker, but he has his set of bad films, but also his set of great films. Inside man falls in neither of those categories, its a good film though. Lee has a solid cast here featuring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster as the main stars. Denzel delivers a top notch performance, Owen is threatening as a bank robber and Foster actually delivers an underwhelming and quite fake performance.
On paper, Inside Man seems like just another Hollywood bloated crime film, where the robbers are after something and threaten the hostages if the police does not give it to them. Well, this film is similar to a plot as such, but what makes this better than just your average crime film is Spike Lee's direction. Inside Man opens up with a close up of Clive Owen saying the who, the when, the why and the how. Once you view this film than you will understand what I meant by that. That scene is very much like The Libertines opening with Johnny Depp.
Owen tells the audience who he is and why he's robbing the bank. He is not alone in the mission though because there are four robbers in total. As the film rolls along, interrogations with the hostages in black and white are held with Detective Keith Frazier who is of course Denzel Washington and Detective Bill Mitchell who is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. These scenes therefore tell us that most hostages or maybe all hostages make it out alive. These scenes actually lower down the level of suspense for the film.
Never does it feel like Inside Man is being genius or incredibly impressive. Its more intelligently thought up than other robbery flicks, but it thinks its initially smarter than it really is. Still, this film has a story and a very interesting one at that which follows with the chairman of the bank Arthur Case, who is played by Christopher Plummer. This type of film usually has a basic premise, with Inside Man it is rather more complex than one could expect.
Inside Man is written by a first time script writer named Russell Gewirtz and for a first its a good start. There is some clever scenes and decent dialogue here. However, the script is flawed in the fact that scenes are written longer than it actually needs. This film doesn't have unnecessary scenes, but a little bit of tighter editing could have made this suspenseful and an edge of your seat thriller, but instead it isn't. It just happens that Inside Man is more of a drama and a smart and entertaining film.
The payoff for this film is surprising and intelligent, not overwhelming, but not underwhelming either. Its different than what one would expect so the ending is not predictable which is a good thing. There are many strengths to be found in Inside Man, from its direction to its ending, but its also flawed that drags it back from being a completely solid motion picture. There is no denying that there are solid performances by most of the cast, a story that keep you interested the entire way through and a cleverity that doesn't come very often.
Inside Man is a good film, theres no doubt about that. However, it had ideas that could have been more effective had they gone and re-edited it. Instead of a viewer having their jaw dropped in surprise, they are watching it without emotions attached. Inside Man has the plot for an emotional film, but that doesn't come out here. Overall, this film is flawed, but it still packs a punch. Even though this is not a great motion picture, Inside Man is still better than a lot of films being released at the moment.
