THE GAME'S AFOOT

"The Game's Afoot," Shakespeare once told us, as did General Chang in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Chang, of course, was played by the supremely underrated actor Christopher Plummer, who plays a prominent role in Spike Lee's new movie "Inside Man," opening today. This may be the first movie that I am genuinely enthused about seeing that has come out this year. While I have my problems with Mr. Lee, who himself seems to have problems with certain ethnic groups, including my own (he especially dislikes the fact that Holocaust documentaries win Best Picture prizes - why this fact should suffuse one with anti-Semitic feelings is not entirely clear, nor is the old saw that "the Jews own Hollywood" much of a powerful laugh line anymore, I think. What owns "Hollywood" is what executives - Jewish, goyim, whatever, think people want to see), he at least is forthright in his expression of those problems. Yes, he is disingenuous as well, but those on the right who attack him are disingenuous AND simultaneously not forthright, nor have they attempted, in their own way as Lee sometimes has, to seriously/creatively discuss the state of race/ethnic relations in America.
If this argument leaves you unmoved, then consider this: as long as the Bill O'Reillys, Bill Bennetts, Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells of the world exist, the Spike Lees of the world MUST be allowed to exist and to speak their mind if we are to have anything resembling an exchange of ideas in this country-healthy or otherwise. The former group's hatred of minorities, I think is hate for hate's sake - yet this group will deny that any such hate exists. Perhaps Lee is one little step above the evolutionary ladder than these Cro-Magnons. Make of that what you will.

Anyway, "Inside Man" has been described as less of a "Spike Lee Joint" (i.e. polemical) than a "genre film" (bank heist film) with some play at the "Joint," so to speak. I particularly like one scene and how that "Joint" scene is described by Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris:

"One of the bank's hostages is Vikram (the excellent Waris Ahluwalia), a young Sikh whom the robbers release early with a message tied around his neck. The NYPD officers on the scene assume he's Arab and that the message is a bomb. They rough him up, then swipe his turban. When Frazier (Denzel Washington) and Mitchell (detectives) interrogate him later in a booth at a diner, Vikram refuses to discuss the heist until his turban is returned, then condemns his harassment. When he's done, Washington says, "But I bet you can still get a cab." In this single moment, which is more vivid than almost all of "Crash," we see the sad modern hierarchy of American bigotry."

Mr. Morris, I should point out, is black. I should also point out that the most enthusiastic praise of "Crash" came not from black film reviewers, but from white ones, who described the film as hopelessly "bleak." It was not. The seeds of optimism were sprinikled throughout that film like so many Afghan poppies. Certain groups feel comforted by this. The above-described scene eschews optimism - it tells it like it is.

In other words, scratch "Inside Man" off the list of potential Best Picture nominees. Not that you, despite the great reviews it's received, ever had it there to begin with.