Inside Man [Blu-ray]
Academy Award® winner† Denzel Washington, Academy Award® nominee†† Clive Owen and Academy Award® winnerº Jodie Foster star in this intense and explosive crime thriller. The perfect bank robbery quickly spirals into an unstable and deadly game of cat-and-mouse between a criminal mastermind (Owen), a determined detective (Washington), and a power broker with a hidden agenda (Foster). As the minutes tick by and the situation becomes increasingly tense, one wrong move could mean disaster for any one of them. From acclaimed director Spike Lee comes the edge-of-your-seat, action-packed thriller The Wall Street Journal calls “a heist film that’s right on the money.”Spike Lee scored his biggest hit to date with Inside Man, an unconventional thriller with fascinating details in the margins of its convoluted plot. The screenplay (by first-timer Russell Gerwitz) could’ve used a few more rewrites; it moves at a brisk pace but in hindsight a lot of it doesn’t make sense. That makes Inside Man more fun to watch than to think about afterwards (when you discover plot holes big enough to drive a truck through), but it’s curiously involving, especially as NYPD Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) struggles to outsmart a high-stakes bank robber (Clive Owen) who, along with a well-trained crew of accomplices, has seized control of a Wall Street bank, turning what initially looks like a hostage crisis into a personal crusade to expose some mysterious evil secrets. As you might expect from the director of Do the Right Thing, Lee seizes several satisfying opportunities to examine post-9/11 issues of racial prejudice and domestic terrorism, and the mysterious “problem solver” Madeline White (Jodie Foster), as eerily sinister as she is vaguely defined, is worthy of her own movie. With the benefit of his most stellar cast to date (including Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor), Lee seems more interested in character details than well-crafted suspense, but that doesn’t stop Inside Man from being engrossing, subtly amusing, and quirky enough to qualify as a welcomed break from the formulaic thrillers that are Hollywood’s bread and butter.–Jeff Shannon
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Stars HORRIBLE.
This movie was a WASTE of 2 hours.
Horrible plot.
Horrible music.
Horrible character development.
Horrible cinematography.
Horrible random pointless scenes.
Horrible beginning.
Horrible middle.
Horrible ending.
Horrible movie.
My favorite part about this film is writing this review.
5 Stars Inside Man — Ingenious!
Inside Man has gotten inside me. I saw it when it first came out in theaters and enjoyed it very much. But there’s a lot more here than first meets the eye.
Upon repeated viewings you can appreciate just how close to perfection Inside Man really is. And with a corrupt bank executive as it’s central villain, I-M is perhaps more timely and topical now than when it was first released in 2005.
It’s one of the top 5 thrillers I have ever seen, with the most ingenious heist plot going, period — a killer cast, a wonderful score, fabulous camera work (some mind-bending crane shots — that stuff ain’t easy!), crackling Mamet-grade dialogue, and a distinctive flash-forward editing style that actually helps viewer understanding and is a hallmark of the film’s unique, hip style, courtesy of director Spike Lee.
I love heist films perhaps more than any other genre, but Inside Man takes the heist film to another level with it’s unique plot of cunning deception and double-talk. Like a mandela, the layers of good and evil, truth and lies, weave in and out on multiple levels. Much like life, nothing is really all that simple or clear cut as it seems.
But the most important thing about Inside Man is that it dares, in the post 9-11 era, to depict a group of “terrorists” in New York City with a compelling and honorable motive, and whose motto might well be “We Will Never Forget”. The giant “We Will Never Forget” banner sprawls across the screen several times, and forms the subtext of this entire story.
The “victim”, bank chairman Arthur Case deliciously played by the avuncular and agreeable Christopher Plummer, is a man with Nazi genocide in his past. The chief bank robber, performed to perfection by Clive Owen, is both looking to enrich himself and to reveal crimes against humanity. In a puzzling and peculiar fashion he is to us both a hero and a thief. Jodie Foster as Madeleine White is a perpetually smiling “fixer” working for the bank chairman, trying to insure a good political outcome for her client. Denzel Washington as Detective Frazier is razor sharp as the “straight man” cop trying to figure out what the heck is going on here.
There were many ways the events in this film could have unfolded to us. The timeline of the film is mostly linear, except for the “flash-forward” hostage interviews which, positioned as they are, serve an intercutting function and break up the action nicely. Aside from the highly motivated characters, this film has a tremendous sense of humor.
As a footnote, the main and end title designs were very nicely done, and in a rarity, the end credits depict all the orchestral players by instrument. Nice.
Inside Man — remarkably ingenious, refreshing, consistently engaging, never drops a beat, brilliant!
4 Stars Great Movie!
Inside Man is a great movie. Fast action, great acting, fantastic plot. I highly recommend this movie.
5 Stars it’s THE most WONDERFUL crime OF the YEAR
i love this film and its ensemble and frequently (”GET ON THE BUS” , “DO THE RIGHT THING” , “HE GOT GAME” , “CLOCKERS” , “SUMMER OF SAM”) its director MR. LEE . i’d highly recommend this picture to anyone who has not seen it . a wonderfully different beast . very smart and gratifying . bravo SPIKE . and thanks again .
4 Stars A smartly written thriller gets a strong technical release
I hadn’t seen this movie in theaters, but was pleasantly surprised by the story. This is not a typical heist / bankrobber movie but adds a few interesting elements to the mix. Strong performances of Jodie Foster, Clive Owen and Denzel Washington elevate the plot even further. If you like thrillers with a smart story, you won’t be disappointed
Technically speaking, this is a strong release: video is clean without spots or other debris, colours are accurate and there’s a lot of detail visible, even in darker elements. Audio is also engaging with clearly intelligible dialogue and some nice pans round out a strong audio track.
Extra’s aren’t abdundant but what is there, I found pretty interesting: some deleted scenes and interviews / featurettes.
All in all, a strong recommendation for fans of thrillers / heist movies!
Filed under: Blue Ray Movie Reviews