Inside Man
Also reviewed by:
Thomas J.
The only way I can explain the praise heaped on this average heist flick is that people have just been astonished that activist/filmmaker Spike Lee has managed to make a 'normal' film. Y'know, one that isn't so politically aware or preachy (although he still has managed to slip in a couple of out-of-nowhere diatribes on racism). As a friend put it, kind of a backhanded compliment when people are saying "Wow – you can't even tell Spike Lee directed this!"
At the half-way point I thought this film had a great chance at being fucking fantastic, a classic. All the elements were there. All it needed was a motherfucker of an ending (and people have been comparing it to The Usual Suspects so I was fucking well expecting one) and I would have walked out spruiking it with superlatives. The set-up was a unique one, and the acting mostly great (Clive Owen in particular), and most of all, the film was damn entertaining and involving. Things were travelling nicely for while.
What I can't understand about Inside Man is how the filmmakers, from the screenwriter up to Spike, were content to build such an enthralling set-up, keeping the tension tight all the way, just to fuck it all up with an ending that could most politely be described as a massive letdown, or, impolitely described as a pointless shitfull anti-climatic nothing. And when I say the ending I am referring to the last half-hour of the film. After the heist is pulled off we follow the film's detectives scramble to piece together everything the audience already knows. How does Spike Lee make so many films, a few of them great, and yet still make these kinds of mistakes? And don't even get me started on the sheer pointlessness of Jodie Foster's character.
It's not just that the ending is tedious, it's that it kind of feels like it was trying to be controversial, or surprising, or something, but was just a whole lot of nothing. When we were smack in the middle of the film and I was hanging on every beat I certainly was not thinking that the one thing this film needed was an inexplicable Nazi conspiracy. And even more confusing is that it turns out that the bank robbers, who did not want to rob the bank (the main thing that was fucking interesting about all of this), and who we were led to believe had the real motive of exposing the whole Nazi bullshit, were actually just in it for the money after all. What a twist! Slap anyone who favourably compares this to The Usual Suspects for me.
Like people are saying, you can hardly tell Spike Lee directed this.