‘Inside
Man’ contains everything needed
for classic suspense
By
Latifah Muhammad
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster join director Spike Lee in the
suspense film “Inside Man.”
The film contains all the ingredients of a good hostage movie: a villain, a
cop and a woman with nice shoes.
The film starts off with Dalton Russel (played by Owen) telling the audience
to remember his name and listen very closely to his story. From that moment,
it becomes apparent this film is going to be a mystery the viewer will involuntarily
want to solve.
Washington plays Detective Keith Frazier, who is currently on thin ice at his
precinct for a money laundering situation he swears he has nothing to do with.
He is in need of a case to put him back in good standings when he is assigned
to a hostage situation at the Manhattan Trust Bank.
Downtown Manhattan is the backdrop for the entire movie. Lee does a good job
of cutting from different scenes, so as to show the hostage situation from
every perspective. But you get to know more characters than necessary in the
movie during interrogation scenes, which are confusing because the viewer is
not sure of the time sequence.
A pinch of social commentary is shown in a scene where a hostage is thrown
out and assumed to be Middle Eastern and therefore a terrorist. The character
sits down with the police in a near-by coffee shop and expresses his feelings
toward the racial profiling he is forced to endure daily in post-9/11 New York.
Foster plays Madeline White, a woman whose wit and tongue are as sharp as her
finely crafted stiletto heels.
She mysteriously prances around calling shots and asking favors from the criminal,
and the mayor. Her roll in the film is not really necessary, nor is it understandable,
but throws another character in the pot causing the audience to wonder if she
is in fact the “inside man.”
Like many “good guy/bad guy” characters before him, Owen plays
a bank robber who is always one step ahead of the police. Owen’s performance
is spectacular, particularly in several phone scenes in which he battles back
and forth with Washington and his squad over his demands. But throughout the
movie, you wonder what his motivation for robbing the bank is because it seems
he wants nothing.
He cleverly instructs each one of the hostages to put on the same blue jumpsuits,
white masks and black covers over their eyes. Because everyone looks the same,
neither the audience nor the police know who is the culprit and who is a hostage.
In effect everyone becomes a suspect, and everyone has a story to tell, making
it impossible to figure out what the ending of the film is going to be.
The film flows in such a manner you almost forget the movie is directed by
Spike Lee, until a scene in which Washington seems to be floating towards the
front door of the bank, as time slows down behind him. This scene immediately
reminds the audience this is indeed a “Spike Lee Joint” because
it is something he has done in several of his movies.
Each minute of the 129-minute film is interesting. Even if you don’t
understand it, the title alone may captivative your mind causing you to become
a detective in the seat of the theater, but in the end “Inside Man” is
not as predictable as you might think.
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