Publicity materials for Inside Man tout it as a “mainstream potboiler,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. While it wears the trappings of a conventional heist drama, Inside Man has too much dramatic energy, humor, and surprise for that label. It’s obvious from the start, when Clive Owen’s brainy criminal, Dalton Russell, waltzes into a Wall Street bank and announces he’s going to make “a very large withdrawal.” His words mislead in many ways; Russell is indeed after something—but not money. That’s where Denzel Washington’s Detective Keith Frazier steps in to manage the hostage situation, said Anthony Lane in The New Yorker. The story unspools cleverly, but Spike Lee’s clumsy handling of the plot’s twists make it clear that he is “not the right director for cops and robbers.” Still, the more the film droops as a thriller, “the more it jabs and jangles as a study of racial abrasion.” Lee peppers the film with brief racial incidents that powerfully illuminate our current zeitgeist. Jodie Foster also gives her best performance in years, as Madeline White, who is hired by the bank president to retrieve something scandalous hidden in a bank safe, said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. Her character is tightly wound, but her performance is utterly relaxed. Foster is clearly “having a blast as she quietly terrifies us.”
Rating: R
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