Review: Inside Man
Monday, November 6th, 2006Well, Blockbuster has been sucking me dry on this movie for a long time (it’s been sitting around my house for way too long). I finally got a chance to watch it.
Inside Man is a good heist flick. All the elements are there, in plain sight, for you to figure everything out. I consider it a personal failure that I didn’t come up with the actual escape plan before it was revealed. I’m usually better at doing that than most people. In this movie though, there were enough distractions and red-herrings that it got past me. To the director (Spike Lee) and the writer (apparently a first-time screenwriter): well done.
If I were to look for any problems, there would be two, though. First, I think it could have been tightened up just a little. At a running time of a bit over 2 hours, a little trimming would have helped. The other was that I think the tying up of the loose ends, while important, took too long after the main plot ended. Momentum just seemed to die rather quickly.
Denzel Washington did a great job, as usual, in the lead role of the detective handling hostage negotiations in this rather odd and extremely well-planned bank robbery. Jodie Foster was a cool customer and a little creepy as the high-society “fixer” who handles Christopher Plummer’s bank owner’s personal stake in the problem. Clive Owen, the lead robber, was very calm and collected - he was a man who knew exactly what to do at every turn.
I’d give this one 4 out of 5 stars.
(Now I just have to find time to watch the other two 3-hour movies that have been sitting here for over a month. It’s hard to find a block of time that big when there are young kids in the house.)
Technorati Tags: heist, Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Clive Owen, movies, reviews, bank robbery
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