Movie Review: Inside Man
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In between the figuring and plotting, the film flash-forwards to exit interviews with the hostages, Mitch and Keith cracking jokes, pressing them to confess their collaboration, jumping at or leaning into them to solicit responses. This array -- anxious, audacious, arrogant -- is clearly made up for "New York" embodiments, persevering, traumatized, post-9/11. Appearing in tight shots, the grainy hi-def digital exacerbating their complexities, the interviewees reveal too-shiny surfaces and their pocked faces.
Tense, showy, and shrewd, the movie is, like everyone's been saying, Lee's most generic (i.e., "accessible"), but that's not what makes it brainy or galvanizing. Indeed, its cleverest moments involve odd and telling details: The credits sequence use of "Chaiyya Chaiyya," the white-guy who recognizes but cannot translate Albanian language, and perhaps most energetically, the Sikh who resents being profiled as "Arab."
Thinking he's one of the robbers, the cops tackle him, take his turban, then refuse to return it to him. When Keith and Mitch pull him into the diner they're using for a headquarters and question him, he finally has enough. Tired of being profiled at airports and eyed on the street, the young Sikh wonders, "What happened to my fucking civil rights?" Keith smiles, a little. "Bet you can get a cab though." Competing traumas, leveling oppressions, comparable resiliences. It's definitely New York.
Families who enjoy this movie should see 25th Hour, Clockers, and Summer of Sam, other Spike Lee films that focus on NYC in crisis and recovery. If you're interested in the heisty generic aspects, see Dog Day Afternoon, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, or Die Hard.
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