By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 24, 2006; C01
Some movies are too clever by half but most are not clever enough by nine-tenths; Spike Lee's new "Inside Man" gets the recipe just right.
A deft, tense pure thriller with great star turns and brilliant directing, it began as an extremely well-crafted screenplay by Russell Gewirtz, whose first script (not merely written, but sold and produced) this was. The result is what might be called "professionally entertaining," like the glossier extravaganzas of the big studio decades: full of attractive people, smart dialogue, vigorous reimaginings of classic situations, surprises and final satisfaction. No surprise, then, that it's a total mainstream job, fronted by Brian Grazer's Imagine Films and apparently first set to be directed by Mr. Middlebrow himself, Ron Howard.
Lee brings something, however, that Howard has notably lacked over his career: incredible camera energy. Throughout the movie, the camera is almost a character. It drifts through, penetrating the action, floating up and down stairs, circling antagonists in the many hostile (but always amusing) confrontations. The movie is exceptionally comfortable in its in-your-face dynamics: Lee may be at his best when people are shouting at each other, or deploying other forms of verbal aggression, trying to manipulate this way and that, groping for leverage, trying to avoid getting pinned. Everybody's a con!
As Gewirtz has it, one morning a staid, rather traditional Wall Street bank (it looks like the Thatcher Library in "Citizen Kane") is swiftly taken over by a crew of heavily armed, thoroughly professional bank robbers. They know how to neutralize the video cameras (infrared spotlight in the lenses), how to deal with hostages (firmly but not savagely), where everything is (including a crucial if seemingly innocuous storeroom).
You can tell their leader because he's the one in a mask and sunglasses; oh, wait, everyone's in mask and sunglasses, including, rather quickly, the hostages. You can tell their leader because, even behind the mask and sunglasses, he radiates command presence and, most interestingly, he's got wit. He's sardonic, amused, unflappable. His weapon is the .357 Magnum revolver but it's also the put-down, the quip, the ironically lofted eyebrow. You never saw a man act so brilliantly behind a mask (you sure didn't in "V for Vendetta"), but possibly it shouldn't be a surprise, for the man behind that mask is Clive Owen, gen-u-wine movie star.
Cops quickly gather, headed by second-string negotiator Detective Keith Frazier (gen-u-wine movie star Denzel Washington), also a fast guy with a quip and no slouch in the charisma department, either. Soon enough, men with big guns -- you know the type, black, plastic and scary -- are all over the place; Lee is also very good on city hubbub, and he gets a gritty sense of urban frenzy, media focus, workplace squabble (even in the SWAT van) and micromanagement from outside. But soon enough, Detective Frazier and The Man in the Cotton Mask are on the phone, doing a nice "Dog Day Afternoon" imitation, which is funny because both of them have seen "Dog Day Afternoon" and realize they're in a version of it in reality.
But just when you think the movie's going to settle down to "Dog Day Afternoon II: The Very Similar Sequel," it mutates weirdly (the first of several times) with the arrival of a third gen-u-wine movie star. This is Jodie Foster as one Madeline White, who is by profession a . . . well, it's one of those nameless jobs that just are. She sort of makes things happen. You know, you've been looking for someone like this your whole life, and if you'd have found her, you would have ended up much better off. She gets things done with a phone call here, a lunch there. She knows people, family histories, financial details, seems to survive nicely as a courtier to the ultra-rich, so much so that she can get the mayor of New York on the phone and give him marching orders. Certainly, it's a romantic conceit, but Foster is notable for her presence, her ice-doll sense of certitude, for the power of the rectitude behind those 5,000-lumen babyblues, so even if her profession is at the outside edge of believability, Foster's strength of personality makes you believe. Her task, working on behalf of the bank's founder (a frosty aristo turn by Christopher Plummer) is to make certain that no one discovers what is in Safe Deposit Box 392. (Or maybe it's 292, or 157; I forgot!)
These three play cat-and-mouse-and-cat, though, depending on circumstances, they take turns being predator and prey. It's a thoroughly delightful game that builds toward a truly original denouement.
Thus it falls to Washington's Frazier to work it out, although, as his supervisor speculates, "There seems not to have been a crime."
Of course there's a crime. The crime is that more movies aren't this provocative. The crime is that more directors don't have Lee's gift for invective and camera movement and for keeping a complex plot thrusting ahead neatly, without ever quite toppling over into incoherence (the thriller-killer). The crime is that more film composers can't put together a score like jazz great (and longtime Lee collaborator) Terence Blanchard's, whose riffs float magically on the air, giving the movie a tragic dimension when at last its moral dilemma is exposed. The crime is that more writers can't play the now-you-see it, now-you-don't game that Gewirtz is such a pro at.
I would say this may not be Lee's best film -- it's clearly a more impersonal, less passionate work than "Do the Right Thing" or "Jungle Fever" -- but it's his most complete. It's about the tale, not the teller.
Inside Man (129 minutes, at area theaters) is rated R for psychological intensity and one scene of extreme violence and profanity.