Inside Man (2006)

In 7 words or less: Clive Owen executes the perfect heist.

What's it all About? Clive Owen is a man with a plan. A very good plan, to rob a New York bank. Denzel Washington is a detective charged with stopping this bank robbery, but is not doing too well. Jodie Foster is hired by the owner of the bank to negotiate to keep something safe that he has hidden in his vault.

A man in a barber chair.

Best bits?Great heist story-telling from Spike Lee here. In a circular timeline we are invited to watch the events unfold from after the robbery has taken place. It's interspersed with police interviews from the hostages recalling the robbery. There's no jazzy hollywood-ness of other heist movies, with a tone more in line with Mann's Collateral. My favourite shot is when a peeved Denzel rushes toward the bank after seeing a nasty execution on the police monitor.

Denzel is mad!

The fun lies as usual in these types of films in finding out how they manage to pull it off and Clive's methods are drip-fed in a pleasing fashion. Beat the Man! Maaaan.

Did it make you think thoughts? Plenty and all at once, none. It has a really good blend of humour, style and tension although, there's a hell of a lot of post 9/11 digging about the treatment of middle eastern people in New York city by the police force and racism in general actually, not unusual for Spike.

Nasty Green Goblin

The last half an hour could have been tightened up a little bit, and this could be the only real flaw in this film. There's a lot of tidying up for all the different characters to do, although the ending is satisfying.

Would you watch it again? Yeah! Leave it long enough in between to forget the twists and turns and you're good to go.

Pay strict attention...

Rating (out of 100%): 81% My cup of tea. (But Coffee because Tea sucks)