FUN "INSIDE"
I saw Spike Lee's "Inside Man" tonight, and, after I came home, read a review of the film containing the following tantalizing sentence:
"And by the time it’s over, Inside Man even ends up forming a curious dialogue with Steven Spielberg’s Munich, though to say exactly how would be to give far too much away."
How could Lee's new movie (which was a thoroughly enjoyable film that used the conventions of the bank heist film as a starting point to spring into something...well, to say too much more would be to reveal vital plot points, and these points are not just important to the story but to us all) have anything in common with a Jewish-themed movie? After all, it was Lee who said he'd rather be the New York Knicks playing in Chicago against The Michael Jordan Bulls, down by three points, with ten seconds left, than be up against a Holocaust movie in the Best Documentary Oscar Category (or something like that), and it was Lee who said something to the effect of Jews controlling Hollywood (he also said white people in general are in charge of Hollywood, and called Warner Brothers "the plantation" when it didn't give him more money for Malcolm X. Whatever he thinks of Jews, his negativity is not limited toward any one ethnicity, and even black people are not off his hook).
One can say that this film has something in common with Munich without revealing what that something is, while simultaneously revealing something of importance about Inside Man all the same: the film has something powerful to say about how the past is prologue; about how, as Roger Ebert so eloquently put it in his review of Godfather Part III, "that you cannot buy forgiveness," about how "it doesn't matter what grand order [one] is invested in [if] one is still a gangster," and about how Americans unfortunately are likely to believe people like the John Huston character in Chinatown (no matter how monstrous such people are) when he said, " "Of course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."
The movie also makes clear that while money and power still speak for themselves, that he who possesses in- formation (especially secrets about the rich and powerful) is as rich and as powerful as anyone.
Bank magnate Andrew Case, played by Christopher Plummer, learns this lesson in "Inside Man," which begins with four individuals breaking into one of the branches he owns. The crew cuts off access to the surveillance cameras, takes hostages, and makes the hostages change into the same outfits that the crew is wearing (ostensily so that the police will not be able to distinguish between the criminals and the non-criminals).
When the Plummer character is notified that this particular branch has seemingly been robbed, his first reaction is, "Oh, Dear God." He then contacts a shadowy Ms. Fix it (a spiky Jodie Foster), a New York City power broker of such influence that she is able to interrupt the mayor, no less, and get HIM to do a favor for her. How she obtained this power, and what her title is, is not explained. This implausibility deflates the otherwise pungent verisimilitude of the movie; but, no matter, Foster plays the part of what the mayor calls a "magnificent cunt" to bitchy perfection.
The Plummer character relates to Foster's Madeline White that the branch in question contains a safety deposit box containing an item or items that are of extraordinary value to him. He asks her to use her influence to make sure that the contents of this box are not touched. He does not tell her what the contents are, but finally gets around to saying that they are of such a nature that if a description of them is made public, his career and life will basically be finished. She gets his instructions loud and clear: "Make sure the contents don't disappear. If they do, make sure who takes them does." This latter part does not mean that he wishes for whomever finds out aout the contents to be killed; rather, he wishes that the person be paid off to not reveal the contents to anyone. We get the sense that Madeline, as she is talking to this very old, and very wealthy man, may even have a good idea of what the box contains. But the movie does not entertain our thoughts.
Meanwhile, at the bank, the standard heist plot unfolds - sort of. Hostages are separated into different rooms. The troublemakers are bound and gagged. Scenes are shown of the detectives (with the lead negotiator played by a crackling Denzel Washington) interviewing the hostages AFTER they have been released..... This storytelling tactic would seem to suggest that the plot is tipping its hand, but.....the movie is one step ahead of us at every turn).
We find out, as the Clive Owen character(the would-e robber) and Washington's Detective Frasier start communicating about Owen's absurd demands (two buses to take him and the hostages to a 747) that Owen's character, Dalton Russell, a smart cookie, did not go into the bank to steal money. Why is he there, and what does he want?
Mid-way through the movie, he gains access to box #392, Plummer's safe deposit box. At first, we aren't shown the box's contents. Soon after the scene where Russell gains access, we are. We don't see the entire contents, but we see the contents that he wants protected, and we get an idea that there are other contents in the box that may somehow be related to whatever embarrassment to Plummer would be caused by the revelation of the existence of the contents we do see.
Soon enough, the White character arrives at the bank to protect Mr. Case's interests. She attempts to do so by trying to do her own form of negotiation with Russell. He greets her by telling her what the contents of the box are. She doesn't seem surprised at the relevation and attempts to cavalierly tell him that he will be given a lenient sentence if he terminates his enterprise - now. He, shall we say, takes her offer "under advisement." Frazier then asks her what happened during her chat. Since she regards pretty much everyone around her as so much flotsam, she tells him essentially nothing.
Eventually, the hostage crisis is, shall we say, resolved (I shall reveal no more), and the audience learns what the remainder of the contents of the box consists of. The Frazier character, who is treated by Plummer, Foster, various police captains, even some of the hostages, as a joke and a toy, has one thing over all of them (something he shares with the Owen character): a cagey sense of intelligence. This intelligence allows him to figure out why the Russell character's scheme was set in motion, and allows Washington to have a beautifully confrontational scene with Plummer where the suave, soft-spoken billionaire is ever so quietly humiliated by the Washington character with the literal flick of a finger. Of course, the Foster character, once she learns of the contents of the box, gets to have her own little pow-wow with the Plummer character as well, and it is in this scene, near the end of the film, that the Chinatown/Godfather themes I mentioned above are drawn into sharp focus. Two terrifically amoral characters here begin to lecture each other, and the audience - in a way that may convince some - about how money can buy morality. One, who is maybe a tiny little less amoral than the other (maybe) leaves the room with a closing line to the other (this closing line is the line I believe the viewer had in mind when he compared the movie to Munich) that is as good a line as you'll hear at the movies all year.
What of the Owen character, you may ask? What does he do with his knowledge of the contents of the box? Well, I'm not giving anything away by saying that he does not die in this film; the ads for the movie make that clear. He, too, throughout the movie, lectures the audience, the Foster character, and even, in a priceless bit, a child hostage, about moral relativism. We can understand his point, though, and the reason why IS one of the points that the movie makes.
"Inside Man" is Lee's third movie since September 11th. Since that date, our government, with the cheerful support of many citizizens, has served up a smorgasboard of secrecy to us with relish. Lee, as this movie makes clear, has no use for old, moneyed people with deep, dark secrets, and believes, as we all should now, more than ever, that secrets that hurt people that properly should be disclosed to the public MUST be disclosed, whenever, however, at whatever cost, no matter how late. This movie, and this message, will make certain people squirm. Lee is good at doing that. But the people who I think will squirm the most deserve to. They are allowing for a very particular kind of secrecy within secrecy to operate now that is reducing this country to economic rubble to their voting choices, just as their ancestors voted in the past for those who.....
Oh wait. I have to stop myself. Don't want to give anything away. Some secrets - ones that people can readily find out - deserve to be found at one's own pleasure. One need not "work at it" to find out these secrets. As for the ones we can't readily figure out, well, Inside Man suggests that.... there are people of conscience "working on it." Thank God.
you can do business with evil men inside the church, for all men are fallible and capable of sin. But God does not take payoffs.
"And by the time it’s over, Inside Man even ends up forming a curious dialogue with Steven Spielberg’s Munich, though to say exactly how would be to give far too much away."
How could Lee's new movie (which was a thoroughly enjoyable film that used the conventions of the bank heist film as a starting point to spring into something...well, to say too much more would be to reveal vital plot points, and these points are not just important to the story but to us all) have anything in common with a Jewish-themed movie? After all, it was Lee who said he'd rather be the New York Knicks playing in Chicago against The Michael Jordan Bulls, down by three points, with ten seconds left, than be up against a Holocaust movie in the Best Documentary Oscar Category (or something like that), and it was Lee who said something to the effect of Jews controlling Hollywood (he also said white people in general are in charge of Hollywood, and called Warner Brothers "the plantation" when it didn't give him more money for Malcolm X. Whatever he thinks of Jews, his negativity is not limited toward any one ethnicity, and even black people are not off his hook).
One can say that this film has something in common with Munich without revealing what that something is, while simultaneously revealing something of importance about Inside Man all the same: the film has something powerful to say about how the past is prologue; about how, as Roger Ebert so eloquently put it in his review of Godfather Part III, "that you cannot buy forgiveness," about how "it doesn't matter what grand order [one] is invested in [if] one is still a gangster," and about how Americans unfortunately are likely to believe people like the John Huston character in Chinatown (no matter how monstrous such people are) when he said, " "Of course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."
The movie also makes clear that while money and power still speak for themselves, that he who possesses in- formation (especially secrets about the rich and powerful) is as rich and as powerful as anyone.
Bank magnate Andrew Case, played by Christopher Plummer, learns this lesson in "Inside Man," which begins with four individuals breaking into one of the branches he owns. The crew cuts off access to the surveillance cameras, takes hostages, and makes the hostages change into the same outfits that the crew is wearing (ostensily so that the police will not be able to distinguish between the criminals and the non-criminals).
When the Plummer character is notified that this particular branch has seemingly been robbed, his first reaction is, "Oh, Dear God." He then contacts a shadowy Ms. Fix it (a spiky Jodie Foster), a New York City power broker of such influence that she is able to interrupt the mayor, no less, and get HIM to do a favor for her. How she obtained this power, and what her title is, is not explained. This implausibility deflates the otherwise pungent verisimilitude of the movie; but, no matter, Foster plays the part of what the mayor calls a "magnificent cunt" to bitchy perfection.
The Plummer character relates to Foster's Madeline White that the branch in question contains a safety deposit box containing an item or items that are of extraordinary value to him. He asks her to use her influence to make sure that the contents of this box are not touched. He does not tell her what the contents are, but finally gets around to saying that they are of such a nature that if a description of them is made public, his career and life will basically be finished. She gets his instructions loud and clear: "Make sure the contents don't disappear. If they do, make sure who takes them does." This latter part does not mean that he wishes for whomever finds out aout the contents to be killed; rather, he wishes that the person be paid off to not reveal the contents to anyone. We get the sense that Madeline, as she is talking to this very old, and very wealthy man, may even have a good idea of what the box contains. But the movie does not entertain our thoughts.
Meanwhile, at the bank, the standard heist plot unfolds - sort of. Hostages are separated into different rooms. The troublemakers are bound and gagged. Scenes are shown of the detectives (with the lead negotiator played by a crackling Denzel Washington) interviewing the hostages AFTER they have been released..... This storytelling tactic would seem to suggest that the plot is tipping its hand, but.....the movie is one step ahead of us at every turn).
We find out, as the Clive Owen character(the would-e robber) and Washington's Detective Frasier start communicating about Owen's absurd demands (two buses to take him and the hostages to a 747) that Owen's character, Dalton Russell, a smart cookie, did not go into the bank to steal money. Why is he there, and what does he want?
Mid-way through the movie, he gains access to box #392, Plummer's safe deposit box. At first, we aren't shown the box's contents. Soon after the scene where Russell gains access, we are. We don't see the entire contents, but we see the contents that he wants protected, and we get an idea that there are other contents in the box that may somehow be related to whatever embarrassment to Plummer would be caused by the revelation of the existence of the contents we do see.
Soon enough, the White character arrives at the bank to protect Mr. Case's interests. She attempts to do so by trying to do her own form of negotiation with Russell. He greets her by telling her what the contents of the box are. She doesn't seem surprised at the relevation and attempts to cavalierly tell him that he will be given a lenient sentence if he terminates his enterprise - now. He, shall we say, takes her offer "under advisement." Frazier then asks her what happened during her chat. Since she regards pretty much everyone around her as so much flotsam, she tells him essentially nothing.
Eventually, the hostage crisis is, shall we say, resolved (I shall reveal no more), and the audience learns what the remainder of the contents of the box consists of. The Frazier character, who is treated by Plummer, Foster, various police captains, even some of the hostages, as a joke and a toy, has one thing over all of them (something he shares with the Owen character): a cagey sense of intelligence. This intelligence allows him to figure out why the Russell character's scheme was set in motion, and allows Washington to have a beautifully confrontational scene with Plummer where the suave, soft-spoken billionaire is ever so quietly humiliated by the Washington character with the literal flick of a finger. Of course, the Foster character, once she learns of the contents of the box, gets to have her own little pow-wow with the Plummer character as well, and it is in this scene, near the end of the film, that the Chinatown/Godfather themes I mentioned above are drawn into sharp focus. Two terrifically amoral characters here begin to lecture each other, and the audience - in a way that may convince some - about how money can buy morality. One, who is maybe a tiny little less amoral than the other (maybe) leaves the room with a closing line to the other (this closing line is the line I believe the viewer had in mind when he compared the movie to Munich) that is as good a line as you'll hear at the movies all year.
What of the Owen character, you may ask? What does he do with his knowledge of the contents of the box? Well, I'm not giving anything away by saying that he does not die in this film; the ads for the movie make that clear. He, too, throughout the movie, lectures the audience, the Foster character, and even, in a priceless bit, a child hostage, about moral relativism. We can understand his point, though, and the reason why IS one of the points that the movie makes.
"Inside Man" is Lee's third movie since September 11th. Since that date, our government, with the cheerful support of many citizizens, has served up a smorgasboard of secrecy to us with relish. Lee, as this movie makes clear, has no use for old, moneyed people with deep, dark secrets, and believes, as we all should now, more than ever, that secrets that hurt people that properly should be disclosed to the public MUST be disclosed, whenever, however, at whatever cost, no matter how late. This movie, and this message, will make certain people squirm. Lee is good at doing that. But the people who I think will squirm the most deserve to. They are allowing for a very particular kind of secrecy within secrecy to operate now that is reducing this country to economic rubble to their voting choices, just as their ancestors voted in the past for those who.....
Oh wait. I have to stop myself. Don't want to give anything away. Some secrets - ones that people can readily find out - deserve to be found at one's own pleasure. One need not "work at it" to find out these secrets. As for the ones we can't readily figure out, well, Inside Man suggests that.... there are people of conscience "working on it." Thank God.
you can do business with evil men inside the church, for all men are fallible and capable of sin. But God does not take payoffs.
posted by EnterCenter at 10:41 PM
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