The film begins with Clive Owen directly addressing the camera and telling us his name (Dalton Russell) and that he's just committed a huge bank heist. So right from the get-go the audience is let in on at least one part of the film's plot machinations--the heist is a fait accompli. That then proceeds to a more standard, Topkapi-like depiction of the actual robbery taking place. What ultimately turns into a recurring motif is initially jarring when strangely green-filtered and grain-enhanced segments keep popping up with Detective Frazier (Denzel Washington) interviewing hostages who were taken during the heist inside a huge Manhattan bank. It slowly becomes obvious he's trying to ferret out an "inside man," someone helping the proceedings from the inside. Playing out against this is a tangential subplot involving the bank's founder (Christopher Plummer), a supposedly devastating secret he's hiding (which anyone worth their mystery two cents is going to guess within seconds--I did), and a high echelon "fixer" (Jodie Foster) he hires to retrieve some damning evidence from the bank that's in the midst of a high-profile hold-up.

Inside Man is a mixed bag, to be sure. Moments of it are incredibly effective, including the wonderfully staged and performed initial hold-up sequence. Lee makes the most of location shots in Manhattan, intercut with some splendidly fluid interior work. It's also interesting, if peculiar, that Owen has to "act" through most of the film with a mask and sunglasses on, completely covering his ability to show any emotion with his weathered face. Washington is effective, if not quite as visceral as Owen, in an at times overly mannered performance (what's with all the manic head rubbing?) that nonetheless provides some understated intensity, ably depicting an on-the-ground hostage negotiator who realizes he's up against someone very, very smart.

Foster is the very odd third wheel in this big movie star trifecta. Her role is actually quite small (just a handful of scenes), and she's really not given a lot to work with, alternating between a sort of sly sarcasm interspersed with outbursts of brusqueness which seem to come out of nowhere. Nonetheless, she's a riveting person to watch in a role really unlike anything she's played in her long career. She's equal parts tough butchiness and high glamour (stiletto heels and all) here, and it's really a fascinating combination.

The supporting cast, led by Plummer, but also including such stalwarts as Willem Dafoe (as the tactical commander at odds with Frazier over how exactly to break the hostage impasse) is also superb, bringing some sharp interplay in what amount to sometimes mere seconds of screentime. Lost's initially annoying, but slowly ingratiating, Miles, Ken Leung, is also on hand as one of the hostages.

Lee utilizes the framework of the film to examine one of his favorite bugaboos, prejudice and stereotyping. Everyone in the film is subject, more or less, to some sort of profiling, and Lee deconstructs this both in the narrative segments (Frazier brings a beat cop up short by telling him to keep his "color commentary"--i.e., his racial comments--to himself), as well as in the interstitial interview segments, where everything from religious bigotry to agism to sexism are lacerated, sometimes quite effectively and subtly.

Inside Man does falter at times in a number of areas. It's too convoluted for its own good, something that seems especially noticeable in the closing scenes of the film, which go on forever after the actual denouement, building to one (admittedly sweet) final reveal. Lee, despite his impeccable craft, also makes at least one unintentionally hilarious directorial misstep, in a scene where Frazier, distraught that a hostage has evidently been killed, storms the bank. Lee films this onslaught completely peculiarly--it's a close-up on Washington that seems to have been filmed on a track with Washington on some sort of movable cart, so that he "glides" in front of the action. It's actually extremely comic in a scene that should be fraught with worry, and I can't imagine the theatrical audience reacted with anything other than a hearty guffaw in movie theaters during the film's initial run.

As sad as it makes me to state this, jazz genius Terence Blanchard's score is also woefully inadequate to the piece. Some cues start out great--a scene in the blacked-out bank starts with a very effective jazz bass motif that then becomes an overblown orchestral monstrosity that simply overpowers any tension we might have otherwise felt in the scene. I had to wonder if Lee's respect and deference toward the jazz master led him to dial back any criticism of the score. Less is more in film music, and Blanchard is best here when he's doing the least, which unfortunately isn't very much of the time.

All in all, though, Inside Man is an enjoyable romp through familiar territory, with enough references to other films (Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, etc.) to keep film buffs smiling. If it is logically preposterous a lot of the time, it's so structurally interesting that most people probably aren't going to notice or at least care very much. Helmed by forceful, if not always completely believable, performances, it's Lee's reentry into big budget studio filmmaking and it shows the director tackling, and for the most part mastering, a genre no one probably ever would have associated with him.

The Blu-ray

Video:
Inside Man is a purposefully dark film, with several segments filtered and grainy, so you must set your expectations accordingly. Its VC-1 2.35:1 image is sharp, with muted, though well saturated color. The filtered segments have an eerie green glow and overly grainy look which immediately set them apart from the bulk of the narrative parts of the film. In the few scenes where Lee gets out in the open, such as a boardwalk chat between Foster and Plummer, colors and detail are outstanding.

Sound:
The DTS HD-MA 5.1 mix is excellent, if overly bombastic at times. Lee seems to be hedging his bets as to whether this is an intimate character study wrapped up in a heist format, or a slam bang action film with lots of explosions and gunfights. Ambient noise is minimal in the bank scenes, but surround channels come to life in the cityscapes, as well as one fantasy gunfight sequence. Dialogue is all very clear, and Blanchard's score, for better or worse, is reproduced with excellent fidelity. DTS 5.1 mixes are also available in French, German, SPanish, Italian and Japanese. Subtitles are available in an astounding variety of languages: all of the soundtrack languages, plus Korean, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Mandarin and Greek.

Extras:
Lee contributes a fun, gritty commentary, and there are also several deleted scenes (some quite lengthy, some lasting just a few seconds), a standard making of featurette, and a look back on Lee and Washington's collaborations with each other.

Final Thoughts:
Not entirely successful, but always interesting and frequently quite exciting, Inside Man boasts an intriguing conceit and an unusual structure. Glaringly improbable, it still has that fine moral center that seems to define a lot of Lee's films. Owen is exceptional, Washington is mannered but excellent, and Foster is really weird (but good weird). Recommended.

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"G-d made stars galore" & "Hey, what kind of a crappy fortune is this?" ZMK, modern prophet