Spike Lee
Inside Man

I don't know what kind of insane masochistic impulse led me, but until a few years ago, I really had a low opinion of Spike Lee. Mine was an unreasonable (as such) prejudice, a miserable conviction that I had developed for some unknown reason, without particularly paying attention to his works. Then, almost by chance, I happened to see ''The 25th Hour,'' probably the best film of the last 10 years (and a bit more), and since then, as if to atone for my original sin, I promised myself to watch everything Spike has made, including the amateur film of the annoying amoebic dysentery of '79. Also for this reason, when ''Inside Man'' came out in 2006, I rushed to the cinema without hesitation with a hint of anxiety mixed with rejection after the previous half-blunder of ''She Hate Me'', especially considering that he had never done crime movies and that, to me, crime movies are quite crappy. Result: a modern paradigm on which to reflect regarding the bank-heist-with-hostages stories god-knows-how-it-will-end-who-knows.

Dalton Russel (Clive Owen) conceives, along with three other criminals, an ambitious yet detailed plan for a bank heist. But not just any bank, the financial stronghold of Wall Street: the Manhattan Trust. His aim, besides the obvious financial gain, is something more noble than one might think. On the other side of the barricade, Detective Keith Frazier (the brilliant Denzel Washington) and his partner Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor), ready to negotiate by any means to save the hostages and prevent the heist. However, just like the backside of a fifty-year-old hidden in a pair of tight stretchy jeans, ''nothing is as it seems.''

The American filmmaker, aided by Russel Gewirtz (screenplay and story) and irradiated by the intriguing allure of ''Dog Day Afternoon'' by Lumet (explicitly referenced in the film), succeeds in an initiative bordering on the impossible: making an American crime thriller with less than 5 minutes of shootouts and chases. A titanic feat: a bit like seeing Bruno Vespa doing journalism, let's say. Even Spike, in a fit of self-praise matching only the greatest, seems so convinced of the impenetrability of his story that he allows himself frequent and shameless flash-forwards in the form of interrogations that, in fact, reveal the outcomes of the story, scattering, moreover, a whole series of clues (even the title) that, if caught, unveil the ending.

Thus, when the suspense diminishes at the hands of its creator, it is the usual provocative and reflective spirit of the director that takes over, emerging uncompromisingly in his characters. Like in the amusing sequence where a certain trend, all gangsta and bullets like 50cent, is criticized, showing us the robber who is stunned by the violence of the video game a young hostage was playing. With the bank vault open in the background, Owen, in one of the most successful scenes, takes the child by the hand, admonishing him and taking him back to the parent to whom he ''will have to say a few words about his video game.''

Having mentioned the presence of Jodie Foster as the ''Lavitola d'oltreoceano,'' an influential all-purpose lawyer with the phone always to her ear, Willem Dafoe (this time incredibly on the side of the good guys), Christopher Plummer as the bank director, and also the usual superb use of the camera (what a surprise...) and Spike's unrestrained passion for the Big Apple, disjointed and cynical in its ethnic and cultural differences, ''Inside Man'' was for me an intriguing surprise.

It manages to be funny and dark, moralistic and psychological, glossy and independent. And in the end, those who win are indeed the smartest but, all things considered, also the most honest...