Customer Reviews
Clever, underrated movie - By: Chris Wood, 20 Jun 2008 
This is a clever & exciting film. I didn't guess the twist, found the whole thing pretty believable & enjoyed it a great deal. Solidly recommended.
first class - By: martin thomas, 06 Jun 2008 excellent caper film thats both exciting & gripping & boosted by excellent performances from a first class cast
No Dog Day. No prizes. - By: Usherette, 19 Mar 2008 
Lumet & Pacino defined the bank heist movie in Dog Day Afternoon. Nothing had ever appeared like it before. Nothing has bettered it since. For literacy, surprises, tension, & a stunning climax, Dog Day continues to rank as one of the best American movies ever made.
Presumably, Lee had this in mind when directing this movie, because it's certainly literate, and, thankfully, imbued with no little intelligence. But artifice can only go so far, & here, in the editing of present events & future outcomes, that artifice begins to creak, betraying as it does a lack of confidence in a plot that if rendered in linear fashion would amount to, well, nothing much at alll.
At the movie's core is a time-worn cinematic cliche about Nazis & ill-gotten gains, & because it is at the core, & therefore buried deep, the plot ultimately makes no sense at alll.
Worse: to sustain it, Jodie Foster appears in one of the daftest roles she's ever taken on, a role whose complete unbelievability destroys the reality which Lee & a superb ensemble cast work so hard to sustain.
By no means a bad movie, it's nevertheless a slight effort, watchable but forgettable, & disappointing in that though the handling of the plot is slick & assured, the movie's basis is as trite & as melodramatic as it gets.
Very different - By: Dodster, 25 Nov 2007 
Not your average bank heist thriller. The story line keeps you guessing & even when you think you have a grip on what's happened, there's a sting in the tail.
The main cast are excellent, but for me, the script was spoiled by unnecessary swearing.
Definitely recommended if you are a fan of any of the leads, or the crime heist genre.
[3.5]--Solid heist thriller that puts a new spin on the familiar tale - By: Jenny J.J.I., 25 Nov 2007 `Inside Man' is a good film. It's essentiallly a standard hostage situation thriller that wasn't over the top. From the moment it begins, there is clearly an urban vibe; the shots of Manhattan, not to mention the movie being billed as "A Spike Lee joint" give it a grittier tone. Do not let these minor touches fool you; as the movie progresses, it helps to not go in with preconceived notions of the typical Spike Lee movie. The camera shot changes every five seconds. Normallly this would just annoy me, but the editor managed to do this without wasting a single one of those five second shots, & with great accompanying music it was actuallly one of my favorite opening sequences ever.
Clive Owen is great as, a "not your everyday bank robber," he's becoming one of my favorite actors. Denzel Washington played the lead role of the perceptive (if slightly jaded) police-detective. He gives us an incredibly performance in spite of the fact that he's playing a cop for what seams like the 11th time in his past 12 films. It's an interesting story with some decent twists & better than average dialogue. Jodie Foster is disappointingly underused as Madeline, so to with Christopher Plummer as Arthur. Willem Dafoe flounders in the background, it looks like he doesn't know why he's there. Chiwetel Ejiofor delivers one of the better performances, yet not his best from his other recent film. The dialogue in the movie is good. There's some humorous & great lines that come out of the character's mouths.
What I liked about Inside Man was the style it was made. It is choppy, but not so much, you get a sense of tension, & it seems very high paced. The plot is good, & very intriguing. There are some things you have to figure out throughout the film, which makes it more interesting. My only problem was that after the bank robbery was over, the film continued for another half hour, & it started to drag a bit.
Aside from minor problems it's a safe bet if you want an enjoyable film & one of Spike Lee's finest.
