Thursday, March 23, 2006
All of the characters in 'Inside Man' deal with moral dilemmas.
By CHRIS HEWITT
ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS
Everybody tries to outsmart everybody else in "Inside Man," and what makes the movie so entertaining is our suspicion that the bad guys are smarter and better organized than the good guys.
Spike Lee's taut, elegant thriller begins with a bank robbery, well-planned by Clive Owen, that is being investigated by a cop (Denzel Washington) and by a fixer (Jodie Foster) who represents a wealthy man (Christopher Plummer, uniquely well-cast for reasons I won't go into). As the robbers take hostages and the police begin negotiations, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell who the good guys are.
The suspense in "Inside Man" comes from the characters, whose behavior is specific, compelling and puzzling. The biggest puzzle is Foster, tickled pink to whip up the riskiest performance of her career. Flirty and seductive in her do-me pumps, she makes her well-connected character a metaphoric hooker who sidles up to the powerful men who hire her to do their dirty work and whispers (as hookers probably do), "Why don't you tell me how you would like this to end?"
It's a bold choice and a smart one, because it implies that the people in power are mostly whores, selling their scruples.
Moral dilemmas
Foster's role is relatively small, but all of the characters in "Inside Man" deal with moral dilemmas. Lee, who has always been good at blunt statements but whose idea of subtlety used to be putting on gloves before smashing us over the head with his ideas, keeps us off-guard by sneakily mixing up his characters' agendas. The hostages are pulled into helping their captors, the nicest folks turn out to be evil and even Washington -- in one of his upstanding-citizen roles -- ends the film on a note that suggests that lying down with dogs can force you to invest in a flea collar.
Lee keeps "Inside Man" anchored in the real world. There are sneaky undercurrents of post-9/11 suspicion surrounding the robbery, which takes place a few blocks from Ground Zero. And racism and anti-Arab sentiments color the behavior of the hostages, who do not exactly band together and sing "Kumbaya."
Recognizable behavior helps keep us invested in the movie, and the script's deft clue-dropping makes it suspenseful. What is behind Foster's Paris Hilton act? Why is Plummer obsessed with the contents of a safety deposit box? Why don't the bank robbers seem interested in money?