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Last Updated: May 30th, 2008 - 11:49:13 |
“Inside Man” is a differently paced heist drama that does keep us guessing until the very end. While most cops and robbers stories take the perspective of either the law or the outlaw, “Inside Man” gives all sides some dap:
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| Denzel Washington stars in Spike Lee's 'Inside Man' |
Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) is in the doghouse at work and needs success on this case to claw his way out. Dalton (Clive Owen) is the no-nonsense robber who has spent years planning the perfect crime. Madeline White (Jodie Foster) is brought in by the president and founder of the bank to make sure his private secrets aren’t blown up in the robbery.
The setting is a Manhattan flagship bank that, with its ornate facade, reeks of old money (old money by many standards at least) and high society. Though set in the present day, the production has a whiff of nostalgia, as if taking a style cue from the comic strip “Dick Tracy.” Like Detective Tracy, Frazier sports a brimmed hat. There are lots of men’s only environments: Madeline passes through a men’s room to reach a private barbershop where she meets with the bank president. The police and city government function as primarily a men’s club where coarse language, especially as related to a women’s sexuality, is used. The women in the production, with the exception of hard-edged Madeline, are ornamental, vampish characters that recall the glory days of romance serials. A cop’s ex-wife comes into the police trailer in a tight dress with a small shopping bag full of tickets she’d like fixed. Frazier’s girlfriend, also a cop, spends a lot of time trying to interest her man in sex and an engagement ring. When we last see her, she’s on her back.
The action begins when a group of men and a woman, disguised as a painting crew, take over the bank, lock the doors and take hostages. But when Dalton is slow to make demands and then, when he does make demands, asks for an airplane out of the country, Detective Frazier becomes suspicious that the robbers really have another agenda. The introduction of Madeline into the mix makes an already strange heist even stranger.
As in “25th Hour,” director Spike Lee takes New York City as his subject here, and addresses issues of race, class and gender only occasionally within the context of the drama. It is obvious that Detective Frazier is battling subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle racism within the New York City Police Department. Washington creates a character that is really not totally likeable but is believable. Ditto for Owen and Foster. Maybe ditto for the film itself. “Inside Man” is not Lee’s best film but, in it, he maneuvers through old heist terrain and gives it a new twist.
Esther Iverem’s new book of poems, “Living in Babylon,” is available at Amazon.com
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