Inside Man

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Inside Man
Directed by: Spike Lee
Produced by: Universal/Imagine/Forty Acres & A Mule
Starring: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster
Rated: R
Time: 129 minutes
Grade: B-minus

Take another look at the running time. Now subtract about seven minutes from it. That’s the amount of time Spike spent on build up in this movie, and the remaining seven minutes is what he gave us for resolution. That is the main, and perhaps fatal, flaw in an otherwise entertaining film.

First of all, let’s just make a few things clear: It’s Spike, so it’s got a great feel, an interesting and different point of view from most mainstream films, and a message at the end. Spike wants us to think, sometimes more than he wants us to understand the plot. His motives are often more important to him than the execution, and this is a perfect example.

Washington plays Detective Keith Frazier, and while I love Denzel, Frazier could pretty much be Herman Boone, Lincoln Rhyme, Anthony Hubbard, John Hobbes, or any of several other characters Denzel has played. He does what he does very well, but he does it awfully similarly in every film. Still, it’s Denzel, and I’d much rather watch him just be him in another incarnation than most other actors of his style and type. Frazier is a cool, passionate, intelligent cop, who sees every angle while everyone else around him focuses on just the obvious. See what I mean? Anyway, he’s called in to a robbery at a big-time Wall Street bank, and away we go.

Owen is the bank robber, which you know if you’ve seen previews. He’s the head of a team of four, and the only one we really learn anything about. He begins the movie with a monologue delivered on video, from some tiny little room at an anonymous location. He tells us to pay strict attention to his words, because he chooses them carefully, and won’t repeat himself. Don’t worry, though, because a. he does repeat himself near the end of the film, and b. even if you do miss it, there’s nothing there that’s going to prove all that revelatory. He tells us that he has planned the perfect bank robbery, and while it’s not entirely clear at the time, he seems to be saying so after the fact. So we can be relatively certain that he lives, though the cell-like atmosphere of the room makes us wonder if he did it.

Foster plays the most aggravating character of all, and a perfect embodiment of the problems with the film. Madeline White is a professional problem solver, I guess. She somehow handles situations that can’t be handled by more conventional means. We’re introduced to her as she brokers a real estate transaction involving the nephew of someone important, and perhaps notorious. This is what she does. Is that enough definition for you? Good, because it’s all you’re going to get. Just as with the film as a whole, there are lots of little glimpses at reality with Madeline White, but no final declaration of her identity.

Owen’s robbery rapidly becomes a hostage situation. This does not seem like a problem at all for the robbers, and although it will nag at you at first, it should make a little more sense at the end. After several hours of hostage crisis drama, Frazier begins to realize that there’s more to the robbery than the obvious characteristics. In fact, as you’ve seen in most previews, he decides that it’s no longer a bank robbery at all. Remember that scene? Remember how it made you instantly want to see the movie to find out what it is??? Don’t get your hopes up. Spike decides not to really follow through on that thought. If you twist your mind a certain way after the conclusion of the film, you can maybe see it as something more than a robbery. A statement, perhaps. But a weakly-made one, and one that shouldn’t leave any moviegoer with half a brain stunned as the credits roll. Unless it’s just that wide-eyed look of someone who wonders if their theater got a bad print of the movie with the last 15 minutes cut off.

That’s not to say it should have been longer. More than two hours is just fine. But you’ll probably find yourself glancing at your watch, wondering just how in the hell there hasn’t been any sort of resolution an hour and 45 minutes into the thing. I like movies that challenge my ability to decipher a mystery. I don’t like movies that don’t actually have a solution to the puzzle.

Again, it’s Spike, and so it has a great sense of space and time. I particularly liked the use of an Indian song called “Chaiyya Chaiyya” at the beginning and end. It’s a real toe-tapper, a random but welcome nod to Bollywood. Spike does this sort of thing really, really well. He can dress up a weak plot with wonderful scenery, dialogue, and tension. Denzel deserves some of that too, because his slow boil is far more enjoyable than the kind of high-wire suspense we’re accustomed to with hostage pictures. There aren’t a lot of screaming scenes, no investigators getting tired of the hostage-takers B.S. and slamming the phone down, no bulletproof vest-less Christ poses in front of the bank doors. It’s a very cerebral version of the robbery/hostage plot, but it just doesn’t deliver.

Should Spike have tacked on a few more minutes? Absolutely not. It doesn’t feel like he ran out of time; it feels like he ran out of story. The motives and causes for the robbery just don’t measure up to the sheer weight of the execution.