Movie Review: Inside Man
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What Parents Should Know
Parents should know the film includes extreme language
(frequent f-words and other profanity, including the n-word).
The robbers take the bank with smoke bombs, dress in masks and
painters' coveralls, and look ominous throughout; hostages are
frightened, with some crying and others acting tough. The film
includes sexual language. Characters display and discuss racism
(most often, anti-Arab and anti-black). Characters smoke
cigarettes and cigars. One crucial plot point involves a
character making money by working with Nazis during WWII.
Families can discuss the way the film uses the generic bank robbery plot to evoke more profound social and political issues, like racism, corruption, ambition, and post-9/11 fears about surveillance and terrorism. How do Keith and the robber, Dalton, come to understand each other's motives and goals? How does the movie compare the moral positions of upper-crusty characters (who own or run the bank) and "regular folks," who bank or work at the institution?
Common Sense Media Review
INSIDE MAN begins with a close-up on Clive Owen as he
describes "the perfect bank robbery" that forms the bulk of the
action. While this heisty plot (script by first timer Russell
Gewirtz) includes the sorts of cunning turns familiar since
Die Hard, its more compelling aspect is its New
Yorkness. The city is everywhere in the film, outside and
inside, but mostly, it's the incisive focus, impetus, and
consequence.
The detectives on the case -- hostage negotiator Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) and his partner Mitch (Chiwetel Ejoifor) -- appear first at the station, oblivious to the robbery that you already know is in serious progress. You've seen the foursome in painters' uniforms and masks enter the bank -- located, the camera notes from an ominous low angle, at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway -- disable the surveillance cameras, and take all the customers, workers, and security guards hostage.
By the time Keith and Mitch arrive, the crime scene is taped off, a mini-city populated by shooters and uniforms, hulking vans and vocal gawkers. Inside the bank, the robbers dress the hostages like themselves, move them from room to room so they can't get to know one another, and dig up a wall in the storage room. While you and the cops wonder what they're up to, Keith has to make nice with turf-protecting Emergency Services Unit Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe), still mad at him for some case they worked years ago, but also anxious to get this one off quickly and successfully.
As time ticks, the film introduces the bank board chairman, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), who sends a minion, a very well-dressed, perfectly coiffed, excruciatingly intelligent fixer, Madeline White (Jodie Foster), introduced as she's arranging for Bin Laden's nephew to purchase a condo. "Miss White," as she's called repeatedly, gets exactly what she wants when she wants it, at least for a minute: she bribes Keith effectively, she plays Case, she knows how to reach the chief robber in charge, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen). And yet, she can't quite solve this puzzle, which involves a special personal safe deposit box inside the bank (though the answer to this puzzle is Inside Man's least effective move, by far).
