Inside Man

After a string of Netflix dregs (re: The Babysitter), it was nice to finally watch a well-made movie! Because of quality of the people involved in the movie - Spike Lee, Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster - I thought Inside Man had the potential to be a great movie. It is certainly a worthy effort, but it just didn't click for me.

The movie is about a bank holdup orchestrated by Clive Owen, with Denzel Washington as the lead detective on the case. The movie is well-shot, and full of tension. But the area which I think Inside Man is really lacking is in the depth of its characterizations. Strange, considering the great actors involved. But the characters are all fairly one-dimensional. Jodie Foster, in particular, seems to wander around the movie with this sly smirk glued to her face. The intellectual standoff between Denzel Washington and Clive Owen -- a la Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive -- never really materializes. And we never identify enough with any of the characters to really get emotionally involved in the film.

I believe that great characters are crucial to the success of any film, regardless of genre. Take The Matrix for example. Of course we all know about the special effects and innovative filmmaking. But it's really the characters - Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, Agent Smith -- that bind us to the movie. I think we particularly identify with Neo, or hope to -- this semi-clueless guy wandering through life who finds that he has a higher calling. Similarly, Titanic would have been just another disaster movie, except that James Cameron chose to show it through the eyes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. We fall in love with their characters, and so the disaster hits home much stronger. Finally, Gladiator is raised above traditional epic films by a very nuanced performance by Russell Crowe. I mean, what would Gladiator have been like if Arnold Schwarzenegger had been cast in that role? *shudder* I wish that Hollywood would concentrate on getting the story and the characters right, and not worry so much about big budgets, fancy special effects, or big-name stars.