Spike gets 'inside' Hollywood

Spike Lee directing a heist thriller? It's hard to imagine the same man who made "Do the Right Thing" and "Malcolm X" tackling such a genre. Rest easy; within the first 10 minutes my skepticism had subsided entirely. \nMeet Dalton Russell (played by the ever cool Clive Owen, "Sin City"), a man who never repeats himself and speaks as if every word out of his mouth has been memorized and planned for more than a year. He swears he is about to conduct the perfect bank heist and by the end of his to-the-point introduction, you'd dare not even doubt him for a second. \nWith the bank held-up and every hostage suited up in outfits and masks to make everyone look like the robbers, the frenzy stirs Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) into action and it is clear from the start if anyone is going to play Russell's game, Frazier is the man to do it. \nThis game is far from easy, considering every few hours another hostage is tossed out the door dressed like the assailants. Are they really hostages or is Russell tossing out members of his own gang? To make matters worse, bank owner Arthur Case (an underused Christopher Plummer, "The New World") has hired one Madeline White (an enigmatic Jodie Foster) to stir things up a bit while protecting something much greater than his financial interests. \nPenned by first-timer Russell Gerwitz, "Inside Man" bounces between the present situation and post-heist round-up: a series of interrogations with every person inside the bank in an attempt to sift through the honest and the dishonest, the ill-fated customer and aptly prepared criminal. \nPerhaps the element that drew Lee to take this project under his wing was the fact that "Inside Man" takes place in post-9/11 New York and the subtle racism mixed with modern paranoia is ever-present, especially when one Middle Eastern hostage is released, his turban ripped from his head and all the cops can shockingly mutter is essentially "Oh no: He's one of those Arabs." \nOne of the other massive draws was for Lee to work with Denzel again as pointed out on the supplement merely titled "Number 4." Having collaborated on "Malcolm X," "Mo' Better Blues" and "He Got Game," "Man" marks the fourth time they've worked together. Their chemistry, love and respect for one another is clear as day but unfortunately the segment is a brief 10 minutes. Following the same time constraints is a making-of doc on the film that hardly scratches any sort of surface. \nAside from the five deleted scenes -- which, for once, felt like they deserved to stay in the film -- the usually silent Lee lends his voice to a commentary track. He talks about it all -- the film, politics and the like. Even he is somewhat surprised to find himself working on such a movie but it appears mega producer Brian Grazer and Lee hit it off so well that they just had to make this movie. \nThere is a moment when Frazier exclaims to Russell that if he'd seen "Dog Day Afternoon" he would know these things don't work out. I'm sure he watched that and every other heist film he could get his hands on. What better way to learn than from others' mistakes?