The Inside Man (2006)

What other reviewers have written about Spike Lee's The Inside Man is all true. It's entertaining, a good heist movie, keeps you guessing, well-cast, etc. Some have said this film is a departure for Spike Lee, in that he is not over-dwelling on race issues and is more interested in telling a good story. A good story it is, but the themes of The Inside Man are still pure Spike, and they're as well done as ever.

What I love about this movie is New York City. This is not the city of Woody Allen or God forbid, "You've Got Mail": brownstones, booklined three-bedroom wood-floored havens of intellectuals who write and hold cocktail parties and tinkle the keys on their baby grand in their spare time. "Home" in this movie is a dark two-room flat with a passed out drunk brother-in-law in the front room. The difference between Woody Allen and Spike Lee is more than just the difference between Manhattan and Brooklyn, however. Lee's New York is grittier, true, but it is also deeper. Race brings tension to this city, but also brings to it a rich resource. When Detective Frazier (Denzel Washington) needs to know what lesser-known Eastern European language the bankrobbers are using to communicate, there is no point waiting for embassies and State Departments to provide translation. Frazier throws the audio on the big speakers and goes out to the crowd in the street, and in less than a minute he knows what language they're speaking.

Spike Lee fans will probably hate me for this, but the man has grown up. I think I've seen all his films, and this one is by far the most human and forgiving. Spike Lee knows that NYC has racial problems, but they are not insurmountable, and what they occasionally require of us is to, gasp, turn the other cheek. We are outraged when a Sikh hostage is abused by the cops as an "Arab!" as he is released, but when we meet him again during debriefing we move on just as he does, with the bemused recognition that at least, hey, he can get a cab in this city anytime he wants. When this film's beat cop says "I'd rather be a live bigot than a politically correct corpse," we see exactly where he is coming from and Spike Lee elegantly leads us to forgive him his racial slurs even as he recognizes they are wrong.

This film has a lot of humor, too, my favorite nice touch being that the secret bad guy is associated with Bush Senior and Margaret Thatcher. But there are problems, too. A bad guy has a secret paper he could have hidden forever with one lit match, so why store it in a safe deposit box? And how do the other bad guys know about the secret and the safe deposit box? Finally, I for one can't figure out what Jodie Foster is doing in this movie besides showing off her bitchin' legs. A go-between, yeah, but for what? And why would anyone trust her, she being outside, and above, everyone's sphere of influence?

This is small complaint, especially when this reviewer gets to look at Clive Owen, the best and sexiest British villain since Alan Rickman (Blue Gal thinks Willem Dafoe is a hottie, too). Go see it. Blue Gal gives it four stars.