Inside
Cuke
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The
Heistman Cometh.
by
Jon Dunmore © 7 April 2006.
Movie opens with Clive Owen, as Dalton Russell,
in hard close-up, warning us to listen to every word he says,
because he'll only say it once. (As George McFly might say,
I don't think I can handle that kind of pressure.) Dalton
goes on to boast of his Perfect Heist; we know he speaks truth
because we are shown heist scenes intercut with flash-forwards
of the cops getting nowhere interrogating hostages. Inside
Man, a Spike Lee Joint, is structured so that we know
the outcome during the first act - at least, we think we do
- for there is a robbery within a robbery in this heist, and
it is that secondary robbery which gets everyone's knickers
knotted.
With
Clive Owen laying down his customary foreboding, soft-spoken
Hard Guy; with Denzel Washington plying his smooth blackness,
playing yet another Intelligent Cop (is that oxymoron?);
with Christopher Plummer settling into one of his comfort-zone
characters - blackhearted CEO (is that tautology?); with
Willem Dafoe playing it straighter than his Jesus as a SWAT
captain, this movie seems all too familiar, yet director
Lee and writer Russell Gewirtz exploit the symbiotic triangle
of heister-hostage-heat in refreshing ways.
The
heisters do not seem too concerned with looting cash; the
hostages are regularly interchanged with their captors (in
being forced to dress like their captors, in blue jumpsuit,
mask and shades, we are never sure who the true hostages
or "inside men" are); the heat - Denzel, as Detective
Frazier - is not as ethical as most leading police characters
are painted. This all culminates in a satisfying resolution
which illustrates that not every heist movie has to land
someone in jail to comply with MPAA hypocrisy.
Amongst
all the "comfortable" leading roles, only Jodie
Foster plays hard against type, doing some strange hybrid
of Ocean's Twelve School of Smug by way of Vincent
Wolf from Pulp Fiction, playing a kind of "cleaner"
for the super-rich, with inside connections so high and
dirty that - like Austin Powers - "Danger" is
her middle name. I'm still trying to figure out how much
scenery was chewed.
After
the heist is underway at a Manhattan bank - with the usual
scenes of cameras deactivated ingeniously, this-is-a-stick-up
and we-mean-business - head CEO of the bank, Arthur Case
(Plummer), enlists the aid of Madeline White (Foster) to
safeguard a life-damaging secret he harbors in one of the
bank's safety deposit boxes.
No
matter her over-the-cheese performance, it is refreshing
to see a strong female character (Foster) who does NOT use
sex as her social-climbing lever or powermongering weapon,
but sheer politics instead. Not that she is devoid of female
wiles; there is a scene in longshot, tracking Foster walking
alongside Plummer, explaining how she will aid him - an
exposition totally lost on me, as my discernment was temporarily
impaired by the vision of secretariat skirt cleaving to
muscled buttock and silk-tanned legs. Convent-severe and
domina-disciplined, Foster comes off as dangerous all right
- but in the wrong way: not dangerous like she'll stymie
your career or have you shot - dangerous like she's going
to clamp your nipples too tight or grind a 5-inch spike
heel into your scrotum. Caveat homo.
Story
structure then denotes that if a CEO is desperate to guard
a secret, it will be that selfsame secret that the thieves
are after.
Amongst
the thieves, stunning Kim Director, a cross between Liv
Tyler and a Robinsons-May mannequin (her fifth outing with
Lee, second with Washington). There is much ado made over
her ample bosom. As above, I concede to paying absolutely
no attention to anything else during those segments. So
sue me for being a fully functioning male.
Any
film that alludes to three Pacino films has to be doing
something right - even if what it's doing right
is just mentioning those films; Frazier's sidekick, Detective
Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) cites the Michael Corleone
method of disposition ("Do you renounce Satan? - Bam!");
Dalton mockingly refers to Frazier as "Serpico";
and Frazier throws in a reference to Inside Man's
granddaddy, Dog Day Afternoon - a self-deprecating
jab, letting us know the filmmakers are well aware of how
closely their pic follows Al's lead.
All
Inside Man's characters are portrayed as intelligent
(with no silly "movie" slip-ups to drive the plot
to a crime-doesn't-pay conclusion). Therefore, Dalton's
mundane request for a bus and plane are taken with suspicion
of stalling by Frazier, who realizes Dalton is too wily
to be pulling your average Dog Day heist. (The only person
who displays insurmountable stupidity is Arthur Case, whose
incriminating secret could have been disposed of with a
twenty-dollar paper shredder or the flush of a toilet.)
The game of outguessing one another wears thin enough for
the SWAT captain to take the drastic measure of storming
the bank.
Just
the way Dalton planned it…
Suffice
to say, there are surprises in store. And note that the
title is not pertaining to the hostage switcharounds, but
a wry reference to Dalton's method of eluding the heat in
the final scenes.
Bad
Guys win.
And
somewhere, an MPAA censor has been fired for letting this
dissident message go unchecked in free christian amerika.
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