Inside Man

Was going to give this one a miss but was recommended it by a friend and after having an afternoon free from work I decided to see it.

Spike Lee directs this movie, centred around a heist at a New York bank. Clive Owen plays the leader of the gang, believing he has created the perfect robbery. Jodie Foster plays a corporate fix-it (like Jimmy Saville in a suit) sent in by the bank manager to ensure his secrets which lie in the vault don't get out. Denzel Washington is the police negotiator sent in to bring the crime to an end.

The interplay between characters is nicely balanced which each of the three main characters somehow assisting the other two in their demands. The plot isn't too complicated but you do enjoy the ride waiting to see if the heist is successful or not. As it turns out the heist is very clever and quite neat, makes you wonder if the guy who came up with the screenplay comes from a criminal family or not; he definitely has the right imagination for it!

Of the three characters, Jodies is perhaps the weakest. Being the only female you wonder if she's only in there to represent the women. There is no sexual frission between her and anyone else, which makes you wonder if the original character was also male but some executive decided otherwise. The other thing that was bugging me about her character was that it seemed odd for her to have a Southern accent when she's a New Yorker, but then does Ms Foster's accent repertoire consist of anything other than Texan?

Denzel plays his role very easily, and in this is no different from any other "Denzel plays a cop" performance that he does, except for that one where he spends the whole film paraplegic in a hospital bed. Clive Owen does alright, nicely playing the "Brits are baddies in Hollywood" role and you probably have more empathy for his character than any of the others.

There was one literal plot hole that had to be explained to me by others in why the robbers were spending so much time digging into the floor of the bank but it made a lot of sense once I got the answer.

Definitely worth seeing!