Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Inside Man (2006)
Director: Spike Lee
Ahh, yes back at it, and what a great movie to start with. I've decided on a new blogging style - shorter and I hope enlightening-er. I will simply point out two or three of the most interesting aspects of the film to discuss. Oh, and I'll begin by recommending the film, or not.
Should you see Inside Man? Absolutely, it was absorbing from the first frame to the last with an incredible power three-some of actors: Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owens.
1. It is interesting that both Spike Lee's and Woody Allen's best films in years have both been thrillers. Mathpoint and Inside Man are plot driven rather than drawn from each film-makers idiosyncrasies and both succeed fantastically as pure cinema entertainment. Yet, when you take a step from the theater Allen's and Lee's obsessions embedded within the story emerge, they are simply embedded a bit deeper than usual. Matchpoint is built upon class, infidelity and sexuality while Inside Man shrewdly, if quietly for Lee, examines race and racism, corrupt power structures and black identity. An example of each, the cops reactions to the Seke and the cop's discussion with Denzel about being shot by a 12-year-old, the set-up of the virtuous criminal (in Owens) and evil pillar of society (in the banker), and Denzel and partner being on the outside of the power structure run by white society - the banker, the mayor, Foster's character. Denzel and buddy are equally bold and talented but return in the evening to apartments in Brooklyn rather than doorman buildings on the the east side.
2. Inside Man recalls Stanley Kubrick's The Killing in reverse. That is, The Killing is an intensely absorbing heist film where everything goes wrong for the plotters, where as Inside Man is equally absorbing even as everything goes right in the heist.
3. So what was Owens' motivation and how did he know about the diamond's history?
Ahh, yes back at it, and what a great movie to start with. I've decided on a new blogging style - shorter and I hope enlightening-er. I will simply point out two or three of the most interesting aspects of the film to discuss. Oh, and I'll begin by recommending the film, or not.
Should you see Inside Man? Absolutely, it was absorbing from the first frame to the last with an incredible power three-some of actors: Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owens.
1. It is interesting that both Spike Lee's and Woody Allen's best films in years have both been thrillers. Mathpoint and Inside Man are plot driven rather than drawn from each film-makers idiosyncrasies and both succeed fantastically as pure cinema entertainment. Yet, when you take a step from the theater Allen's and Lee's obsessions embedded within the story emerge, they are simply embedded a bit deeper than usual. Matchpoint is built upon class, infidelity and sexuality while Inside Man shrewdly, if quietly for Lee, examines race and racism, corrupt power structures and black identity. An example of each, the cops reactions to the Seke and the cop's discussion with Denzel about being shot by a 12-year-old, the set-up of the virtuous criminal (in Owens) and evil pillar of society (in the banker), and Denzel and partner being on the outside of the power structure run by white society - the banker, the mayor, Foster's character. Denzel and buddy are equally bold and talented but return in the evening to apartments in Brooklyn rather than doorman buildings on the the east side.
2. Inside Man recalls Stanley Kubrick's The Killing in reverse. That is, The Killing is an intensely absorbing heist film where everything goes wrong for the plotters, where as Inside Man is equally absorbing even as everything goes right in the heist.
3. So what was Owens' motivation and how did he know about the diamond's history?
