Oracle Online

Inside Man is that rare movie which is much better than its average previews. The film starts out rather inanely, establishing the good guys (Denzel Washington) and the bad (Clive Owen).

Then it shoots things up, with no one’s intentions entirely what they seem. Owen and his counterparts appear to be creating a sense of chaos, but aren’t really out for the profits that come with heisting a central bank in Manhattan.
Washington is neither a hero nor a villain, but simply an opportunist, trying to play this predicament to his advantages. And certainly not Jodie Foster’s slick real estate/crime lord, who struts around slinging like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Even Christopher Plummer, playing a billionaire bank president, leaves open a good deal of imagination toward his intentions.

However, great casts are won and lost on whether the director can handle them, and this is where Lee uses his years of living in Brooklyn to compare the post-9/11 world of New York in a situation like this (rather cleverly, Lee never mentions the tragedies at the World Trade Center, but you can find the actions of the hostages and police echoing the attacks in every nervous plea).

The film also targets racism and sexism, and shoves humor into its plot, but the lines are thrown out with such vindictive determination that one can’t tell if they’re supposed to laugh or just cling to the popcorn.

The twists and thrills are nail-biters, but they are so slow the audience feels more of a clawing-the-armrest sort of panic rather than a jump-out-of-there-seat shock. In one particularly nasty scene, Owen takes every hostage’s cell phone, only to torture the man who is hiding his phone in his office.

The plot remains a head scratcher right up until the end, and even when you suspect you have some of the mystery solved, there are enough nagging questions to keep your radar alert.

The only major flaw in the film comes in its last moments, when Lee’s first major venture into Hollywood gives a couple of clearly Hollywood endings. I suspect that sappy producer Brian Grazer, the man behind Cinderella Man and The Grinch, is partially to blame for the change of pace at the end. It would have been nicer had Lee’s first venture into mainstream movies avoided some of the trite cliches of the box office muscle makers, but why quibble with the best crime drama since The Usual Suspects?