Review: Inside Man

On our way to dinner after this movie, my friend commented: "Wow, this was Spike Lee's best directing job yet!"

My response: "If I got to make a movie, tomorrow, that had Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster, Clive Owen, and Willem Dafoe - I couldn't possibly screw it up either!"

Understand: I'm not taking anything away from Spike. But let's keep it real, this is probably the first movie he's had to direct that 1) wasn't all about the bruthas, and 2) he didn't write himself. So in that respect, this may be his true breakout film, showing that he's more than an afro-centric director trying to prove he hasn't forgotten where he came from.

Not to say that his touch isn't visible throughout the film. Spike has a flair for bringing out the "real New York", showing both the beauty of the cityscape from various angles and the grittiness that we all have come to love about the city we live in. He manages, if you'll forgive my repetitiveness, to "keep it real" - his New York isn't cleaned up and spotless, it's charm and allure is in it's disdain for what other people think of it.

Denzel is...well, he's Denzel. He's a great actor, truly, but in some respect I catagorize him with Tom Cruise when it comes to the roles he takes. His own personality comes across in his characters, to the extent that you're not sure where he's acting and where he's being himself. Change the clothes and the locale, and you - for the most part - find yourself with essentially the same character. The most notable except is his portrayal of Creasy in "A Man Apart", a role that I personally felt took him to another level of acting.

In "Inside Man", his character Detective Frazier is a cross between the street smart detective in Training Day, and the cerebral foresics expert in The Bone Collector. Frazier, you feel, just might be a *little* corrupt - maybe. Or maybe more than you initially thought. You really don't know until then end, and even then you still have to wonder what's really going on with the character. He's deceptively intelligent, picking up on subtle clues as if he's channeling Columbo while he tries to unravel the mystery of the bank robbery.

Clive Owen plays the master antagonist, the clever bank robber who seems to have more of an agenda than he wants anyone to realize. He's calm, smooth, calculating, confident - exactly the kind of man you'd expect as a Bond villain, without being too much of a cartoon. He's unreadable, his expressions unchanging - and he seems genuinely impressed and amused by Frazier's dogged determination to discover his plans. Owen is the perfect poker player, keeping you guessing literally until the very end.

Jodie Foster steps out of character from her neurotic mother roles and has a little fun in this movie, playing the secretive Madeline White - a "facilitator", for lack fo a better word, whose job it is to secure the privacy of certain items within the bank. Foster looks as if she's having a blast with this role, portraying a woman with a sense of bravado that suggests she will come out sparkling clean out of any situation, no matter how deeply involved she becomes.

Overall, it's a fun movie to watch. The Trickster gives it 4 out of 5 bananas.