Inside Man

This was a movie that I have been interested in seeing for a long time. It has a lot of things going for it: the cast, the director, the setting of being about a bank robbery. There are just a lot of things about this movie that got me very excited.

Inside Man gets right into the action almost immediately as we are introduced to Dalton Russell (played by Clive Owen). From the get go he says he's going to pull off the perfect robbery in a very cryptic opening. And then the heist begins. Russell and his team occupy the bank and take the patrons and the staff hostage. The police are quickly notified and they assign Detective Keith Frazier (played by Denzel Washington) a cocky hostage negotiator who is as witty as he is intelligent.

On face value, Inside Man is just a crime thriller of cops versus robbers. But the reality is that the movie is actually a psychological thriller where Detective Fraizer is trying to solve the riddles that are laid out in front of him by Russell.

All the while you have Jodi Foster playing a power broker named Madeline White who is hired to meddle in the game between Frazier and Russell by Arthur Case (played by Christopher Plummer) who along with owning the bank in question, also has an incredible vested interest in the contents of the bank.

I'll talk about the good things first because putting my opinion out front, this is a really fun movie.

I'd say the best comparison of what this movie has to offer is the crime thriller feeling provided in Heat, with the psychological thriller feeling of a movie like Gone Girl where you're always asking questioning the puzzle and trying to figure out every individual piece.

The first thing worth talking about is the cast.

This movie came out at a time where Clive Owen was in everything. 2005 and 2006 were the years of Clive Owen and I've seen a lot of those movies. The difference is, Clive Owen is actually a lot of fun in this movie. Usually he's all monotone and British that he's not really that interesting of a character.

In this movie, he's intriguing, you're listening to every word he's saying and he's probably the best part of the puzzle that is this movie. You're always kind of wondering why he's pulling off this heist, and what lengths he is willing to go to make this heist a success.

What's more is that you never really feel like Russell's motivations or even his entire plan until the very end of the movie and they do a very good job at hiding it. Throughout the entire movie, Russell is the puppet master and its just fascinating figuring out his plan.

And the vehicles to figuring out the mystery behind Russell is Detective Frazier (and his partner Bill Mitchell (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor)). While Denzel is the main character in this movie, of course Chiwetel Ejiofor gives a performance that is pretty underrated like a lot of his performances were until recently.

Frazier is a good vehicle for the audience to solve the mystery, but he's his own shade of character that creates a great unhinged loose canon to juxtapose Owen's cool and calculated Russell.

The weird part about Frazier's character is that he is painted from the start as this by the book cop who is very good at his job, but at the same time there is a crooked edge about him that really colors the character and makes him interesting.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is honestly the sidekick in this film and he's just there to give Denzel a partner. But like most performances from Ejiofor, I really enjoy him.

Another part of the police end of things is Willem Dafoe. Dafoe plays the tactical lead of the police at the hostage situation. He's a pretty typical character you've seen before. He's the guy who is more prone to action rather than talking situations through. He's not the best part of the movie, but its Willem Dafoe. You really can't go wrong with Dafoe.

And then there is Jodi Foster’s character Madeline White. Now her character sometimes seems a bit out of place and in the grand scheme of things probably could have been played by anybody because she’s not actually as important to the movie as much as you would think. However, Jodi Foster gives a performance in this movie that I really enjoyed.

Most performances I’ve seen from Jodi Foster have been pretty bland and calculated. She’s very much like Clive Owen in that she is very good at portraying someone who is very closed off and quiet. However, like Owen, Foster gives a performance in this movie that is a lot different than anything I’ve seen her in. She’s confidence, she’s cocky, and, dare I say it, there’s a little bit of sexiness in her performance. While I was a little bit annoyed with her character at times, especially when she would only show up for a scene or two and then disappear until she was needed, I liked what Foster was doing with the character and I liked how different it was from anything I’ve seen from her. This is all with the caveat that I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of Jodi Foster’s filmography. The point however is that I liked what I saw and it was different.

The last performance worth mentioning is Christopher Plummer. I don’t think I’ve seen too many things that Plummer has been in that I didn’t like and this is no different… there’s not much else to say, I enjoyed him.

The characters really drive the story because the truth is, the story is pretty simple. Again, on face value, this is just a procedural episode that could usually be resolved in an hour run time. But the psychological elements and the complexity of the plot makes its something that needed to be a feature length film, especially in 2006.

Bank Heists are always appealing topics to portray on film and while the movie is more about the psychological battle between Frazier and Russell, a lot of the story is supported by its structure and the directing of Spike Lee. I really can’t say I’ve seen a lot of his movies, but if they are anything like this film, I think I have to check out Spike Lee in the future.

Now that is not to say that the directing in this movie is perfect. There are a lot of uneven parts of this movie both in the cinematography and the story. I mentioned before the limited exposure we really have of Jodi Foster in this movie when I think she should have been in more of the film. I also think the movie may have suffered a little bit by writing Russell as too much of a mastermind and not so much as a character. Not only do you have trouble totally understanding his motives, even at the end, there are a lot of moments where he’s so in control that you kind of wonder if Frazier is even an intellectual match and if there’s even really an intellectual battle going or if its just Russell pulling strings the entire time that there’s no point for anyone to counter him.

The other thing worth mentioning is that there are a couple of moments where I think Spike Lee or the cinematographer wanted to get creative with the cinematography and it didn’t always fit with the tone the movie had already set up. Its not that these shots were bad or not well done, they just felt out of place. I think I would have preferred there to either be a lot more artsy shots to give the movie a different kind of feel, or leave those out and give us a straight forward action flick with action cinematography.

Overall, there was a slight unevenness about the movie that was noticeable. It didn’t make me dislike the movie, I just think it could have been cleaned up to make me enjoy it even more than I already did.

That’s really the majority of my thoughts on Inside Man. If you have Netflix or have been eyeing this movie for a while on Redbox, do give it a watch. I can’t believe its already 10 years old because it definitely feels like a movie that would come out now. I think anybody can go into this movie and come out having a pretty good time.

But what do you think? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @cmhaugen24 as well as send me requests for movies I should watch in the future. If you follow me on Twitter you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. The first thing that made me think this movie was different was the opening song. When I heard this song, I knew this movie wasn't totally what I expected. Enjoy!