Inside Man
Featuring a determined Clive Owen acting as the most mysterious bank robber we’ve seen in years, Inside Man – a Spike Lee joint – burst onto our screen a few years ago and still remains intriguing and very much watchable. One of the more original heist movies of the last decade – and yes, Sarah Jane Szikora , I think you owe me £10 now as I definitely win that bet! – Inside Man marked a new kind of bank robbery movie. One which focussed on acting and suspense over action and raw fire-power. In other words, it was just what we needed: something new and invigorating that could inject new life into what was beginning to turn into a stubborn and lifeless genre.
Inside Man begins when a bank – New York’s largest, in fact – is taken hostage by a seemingly typical gang of robbers. Clad in the same uniform, to start with we’re convinced this is all about the money. But as the tension increases and a detective (played by a well-casted Denzel Washington) gets closer to what he’s sure is the truth, deadly secrets begin to unravel.
I for one would have liked to see a bit more variety in the pacing of this movie
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Inside Man becomes a movie which seems to have little in common with the movies we first compared it to.
Inside Man, as well as being a heist movie, is a film about secrets and lies…power and deceit. It’s both serious and at times laugh-out-loud funny too; somewhere between a high-octane thriller and a mystery drama we’ve never seen before. By the end of it, the film has carved out a genre of its own, making it somewhat of an anomaly.
That’s not to say that the film doesn’t have its faults — big faults. One thing many have noted about the film is its smugness; intelligent as it is, you can’t help but think that at times it’s all a little too in-control for your liking. That is the point of the film, true, but I for one would have liked to see a bit more variety in the pacing of this movie.
There again, the ending is a good one and easily ratchets up the tension to make you glad you sat through it. More importantly than that, when the final secrets are revealed – right in the closing minute or two – there are a few plot points the majority of us did not see coming.
In this age of predictable Hollywood messes and CGI, it’s nice to know that the big movie makers still care about surprising us.
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