Inside Man Review
by Steven O. (null AT null DOT com)August 20th, 2006
Since "Inside Man" has already been reviewed extensively, what follows is really more of a commentary than a review.....
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MAJOR SPOILERS and Heavy Criticism follow
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Here we go....
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What follows is a review, and really more of a commentary, on the 2006 Spike Lee film "Inside Man" with Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, and Denzel Washington. "Inside Man" has already been extensively reviewed, and there's no need to repeat the plot here in too much detail. Basically, Clive Owen is the head of a group of bank robbers, Denzel Washington is the police negotiator whose mission is to ferret the bank robbers out of the bank, and Jodie Foster plays a rather mysterious power broker acting on behalf of the Chairman Of The Board of the bank.
As indicated above, there are going to be extensive spoilers here. It's the purpose of this commentary not so much to critique the filmmaking as to provide one viewer's response, so that others can decide if this is a film they'd actually want to see. And, my personal response to the film was that in many respects I regretted seeing it, and it's not a film that I would recommend to others.
Now, please bear in mind, this is an exceptionally well-made film. It is very well acted and very well directed. Another reviewer on rec.arts.movies.reviews had a comment to the effect that "Inside Man is the best damn fun I've had at the movies yet this year. It keeps us hooked, with actors behind the characters who are steely-eyed with experience." While I agree with the assessment of the acting, it's clear that this other reviewer and I have somewhat different concepts of fun.
Now, here is where the spoilers come in. When I see a movie, I usually like my good guys and my bad guys to get their fair comeuppance. Of course, sometimes a complex movie will have very complex notions of who is a good guy and who is a bad guy, and this Spike Lee film stands out as one such movie. The first spoiler here is the fact that the bank robbers to have an unusual motive for their robbery. Yes they want to get rich -- they plan to steal some diamonds to do that -- but there is an additional motive as well.
It turns out that's the owner and founder of the bank, played Christopher Plummer, originally made his fortune by collaborating with the Nazis. For reasons never clearly revealed, Clive Owen's character happens to be aware that this man started out in life as a Nazi collaborator. Moreover, Clive Owen even knows that this man retained, in a safety deposit box in his own bank, a document and other items which prove his connections with the Nazis.
So, Clive Own has a duel mission; he not only wants to get the diamonds, also stored in the same safe-deposit box, for his own personal fortune; he also wants to obtain the evidence that the owner of the bank is a former Nazi collaborator. In short, the head robber, Clive Owen, has the honorable mission to see that justice finally occurs. The head robber is going to get the evidence that the head of the bank is a former Nazi operator, and turn over to the police.
The bank robbers, as it turns out, are successful in their mission. Through means and machinations which I will not spoil, the robbers actually manage to get out of the bank, even though the bank is surrounded by hundreds of police officers and SWAT team members. How this escape is made his brilliantly clever, and I was not able to figure it out, nor even able to see it coming, until it was revealed. So kudos to the writer and to the director for coming up with the very clever escape scheme, and for executing it on film so that I at least was not able to see it coming.
So what is the problem with this movie? The problem with the movie is that it tries to suggest that the bank robbers are actually heroes. They're not only clever enough to pull off the robbery successfully, but they are also motivated at least in part by noble ideals of exposing a former Nazi operator. So, these are good guys, right? No, I don't think so.
Here's the problem. In order to pull off their bank robbery, the bank robbers need to take as hostages the staff and the customers who are inside the bank. Now, it is suggested throughout the film in a variety of ways that these bank robbers are actually morally motivated people. Indeed, that is one of the puzzles and mysteries of the film. For example the Clive Owen character is clearly shown as fretting over the fact that one preadolescent boy hostage is playing a very violent video game. Clive Owen, in fact, says that he's going to have a talk with the boys father (also a hostage) about this issue. Moreover, although the robbers repeatedly threatened to kill some of the hostages, and although in fact they even stage a very realistic seeming execution, they never actually kill any of the hostages. Again, this is clearly meant to suggest their moral nobility and values.
On the other hand, the bank robbers scare the absolute living crap out of the hostages. This aspect of the events in the film is depicted with extremely painful, indeed, even searing reality. None of the hostages may be killed, but several of them are beaten up in the course of the film, and this is shown quite graphically. In addition, the others are clearly shown as being truly terrorized by this experience.
I found it extremely painful and difficult to watch the scenes. Again, one has to commend Spike Lee -- no, I take that back, I don't commend this film or the director -- but I acknowledge Spike Lee's talent in creating a very realistic and gripping film. But are these bank robbers really noble people, moral people, the proverbial good guys? I'm sure that can be pointedly debated, and indeed may be part of the intent of the film to make that the subject of debate.
Nonetheless, for this viewer, I simply found the entire experience very distressing. And, at the end, I was tremendously let down that Clive Owen and his fellow robbers were not apprehended and not given the justice they deserved. In short, it was both a stressful experience to watch the film, because of the realism with which the hostage trauma was depicted, and beyond that ultimately I found it a very demoralizing experience. The bad guys got away, and for me that's just not a part of a good or rewarding film going experience.
There are times, in some films, when the bad guys getting away is something that one anticipates, and indeed one understands as part of the morale of the experience, as an exploration of evil. Another film I saw recently was the George Clooney film about intrigue in the Mideast, Syrianna. That film was somewhat confusing in some respects, but one could pretty much anticipate where it was going, namely that the oil interests would prevail over the interests of common decency and the interests of both the Arab and the American people. That film was obviously intended as a statement about corruption in the oil business, and corruption in politics in general. Okay, so that was what the film was about, corruption.
"Inside Man", on the other hand, tries to play it both ways. It's not intended as a film about corruption, its intended as a film about clever people pulling off a plot to implicate a bad man. (The "bad man", again, is the owner of the bank.) The problem is that the bank robbers are, in their own way, almost as bad as the Nazis, or at least as any Nazi collaborator. True, they don't kill, they just terrorize and then they get away with it. Particularly troubling was a scene at the very end, when it finally dawns on Denzel Washington how the Clive Owen character escaped. Instead of saying "Damn", and being furious for having been fooled by the bank robber, Denzel Washington smiles, as if to say, "Wow, clever fellow, how he pulled that all off!"
I don't know how other people were able to find this entertaining. Each viewer to their own tastes, of course, but personally I found this a highly distasteful film. As excellently as it was made, it was also an immersion in the ugliest side of what human beings can do to each other, and with no sense at the end of redemption or justice of any kind. Overall, a slick and brilliantly made yet hollow and mean film. Not recommended, at least not by this commentator.
steveqdr AATT YYaahhoo DDOOTT Ccoommxx
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
