The immense banking institutions and their high-ranking administrators have long been the subject of widespread scorn, a sentiment that intensified dramatically in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis. This populist backlash manifested itself in movements like Occupy Wall Street, yet Hollywood remained wary of capitalising on this animosity, presumably due to concerns about alienating the very financiers who keep their studios afloat. In 2006, Spike Lee's Inside Man emerged as an anomaly within this cautious landscape – an action-packed thriller that directly confronted these contentious themes two years before the financial crisis brought anti-banking sentiments to the fore.
The film commences with an intriguing prologue in which Dalton Russell (played by Clive Owen), the mastermind behind the plot, addresses the audience from his confined cell and asserts that he has committed the "perfect" robbery. As we are transported back in time, we witness how Dalton expertly orchestrates a group of masked armed robbers who invade a Manhattan bank, taking both staff and clients hostage. The NYPD swiftly responds to this crisis, dispatching Detective Keith Frazier (played by Denzel Washington) to negotiate with the captors alongside his partner, Detective Bill Mitchell (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor). Meanwhile, Arthur Case (played by Christopher Plummer), the bank's founder, enlists the services of politically connected fixer Madeleine White (played by Jodie Foster) to secure direct involvement in the case.
Spike Lee is widely known for his politically charged films that explore the challenges faced by his native African American community; however, he approached Inside Man as a hired director, working on a script originally written by Russell Gerwitz as a generic heist story. Had it been directed by Ron Howard, as producer Brian Grazer initially intended, it would have likely resulted in a "safe" and formulaic heist film. Instead, Lee drew inspiration from two 1970s heist genre classics set in New York City – Dog Day Afternoon and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Like these films, crime plot of Inside Man, confined to a single location, provided opportunities for social commentary on the less-than-ideal conditions within the city, including the persistent racist bigotry that leads turban-wearing Sikhs to be mistaken for Arab terrorists, as well as the ever-present corruption that permeates from Wall Street offices to the political establishment and police detectives.
Lee directs the film with great skill and energy, striking a perfect balance between action-packed sequences and expository dialogue. He ingeniously employs fast-forward techniques during police interrogation scenes, allowing participants to explain the unfolding events and thus prevent audience confusion. The acting is uniformly strong, with Denzel Washington delivering a solid performance alongside Clive Owen, who impresses despite his character being masked for much of the film.
Despite its many strengths, Inside Man is not without its flaws. One significant issue lies in the character of Madeleine White, an unnecessary addition to the cast whose primary purpose seems to be to provide a platform for an Oscar-winning actress. Moreover, the decision to incorporate the Holocaust as a historical backdrop for the plot, likely intended to disassociate anti-banking sentiments from potential anti-Semitism, creates some problems with plausibility due to certain characters' ages.
Despite these flaws, Inside Man was largely well-received by critics and audiences alike, becoming Spike Lee's most commercially successful film. At one point, there were discussions about a sequel; however, the final result was the obscure 2019 direct-to-video film Inside Man: Most Wanted.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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