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Inside
Man: Spike Lee Goes Mainstream, Sort Of Longtime admirers of Spike Lee will recognize a few of the director’s trademarks in the heist picture Inside Man featuring a fine performance by Denzel Washington. There is a cool shot of Washington standing on a dolly, creating one of those optical illusions, which cause film students to squeal with pleasure. A terrific score by jazz musician Terence Blanchard accompanies some choice moments dealing with racism. There’s also a lot of plot, and a premise overload that nearly undoes the movie. Washington is superb as a detective with Internal Affairs breathing down his neck. Willem Dafoe plays a tactical unit leader, and he appears to have a checkered history with Washington’s character. It looks as if the situation is going to come to a boil, but the conflict is soon cast aside as the cops get down to the real business at hand. Jodie Foster is interesting as a mysterious “problem solver” enlisted by the bank CEO Christopher Plummer to retrieve this movie’s “MacGuffin,” a safe deposit box whose contents would prove very damaging to the bank big shot if revealed. Clive Owen exerts quiet, menacing power as the leader of the bank robbers. There’s a particularly great moment when he looks at a violent hand-held video game being played by a child hostage and remarks, “I’m gonna have to talk to your father.” It’s the director’s way of sneaking in some Bill Cosby-type social commentary. Owen is constantly outwitting the cops, and this game of cat and mouse is fun as it plays out. I liked the moments of humor, especially in some not at all confusing “flash forward” interrogation sequences. Instead of aping Martin Scorsese, Lee appears to be channeling Preston Sturges by turning even the most insignificant bit players into fully realized characters. A striking camera pan of terrified bank hostages recalls Sturges’ great Sullivan’s Travels. Lee also shows an eye for detail akin to the crime movies of Michael Mann. At his best, Lee is a great observer of human behavior in the mode of Robert Altman. Which is why Inside Man doesn’t quite cut it. Every time there’s some interesting interaction between any of the characters—leading or seemingly minor—the story has to get moving again. As a bank robber picture, it pales next to Dog Day Afternoon and Bill Murray’s hilarious Quick Change. I found the Plummer character’s history hard to swallow too, although the film’s assertion that the real criminals are the ones sitting in their cushy executive offices is a good one. In a lesser filmmaker’s hands, I might forgive Inside Man for not being edgier. Is it fair to hold Lee to a higher standard? Maybe not, but that’s what he gets for making all those great movies: Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, 4 Little Girls, Get on the Bus, Clockers, Bamboozled, He Got Game… Bottom Line: A decent cops and robbers flick, but there’s a much more interesting movie aching to bust out. |
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Thank
You for Smoking: A Flexible Morality Play It’s rare that gimmicky voiceovers, precocious camera tricks, and complicated, slightly smug wit make for a good movie-watching experience, but in Thank You for Smoking, the concerted effort and excessive cleverness combine for one of the most consistently (and persistently) funny and sharp films I’ve seen in some time. It’s obvious by the quick, often pun-filled humor that this film originated with a book, and the novel is probably worth reading just to catch more of the quick, one-off jokes peppering this version. The gags come fast and are never labored over—if you didn’t get it, it isn’t going to repeat itself for your sake. Much of the laughter in my theater came after a moment’s pause for deliberation, the satisfied chuckles of people who worked to get something and were well rewarded. However, the tight script and slick humor wouldn’t be worth watching without worthy performances. Aaron Eckhart owns this movie, easily selling himself as a confident tobacco lobbyist whose aplomb and square-jawed handsomeness easily win people away from William H. Macy’s righteous but granola-crunchy anti-smoking senator. However, Eckhart moves easily and believably into his other role as the father of a 12-year-old boy, being concerned and conscientious without ever being preachy or precious. Either of his character’s faces could have been the stuff of clichÈ and either treacle or smarminess, but instead Eckhart steers away from parody and makes both genuine, giving a gravity to the movie that keeps it emotionally anchored amidst the satire. He’s painted as neither good nor bad, and it’s a great thing that a movie ostensibly about such a polarizing issue lets us make up our own minds about this character, and gives us no easy reasons to lean one way or the other. J.K. Simmons, still in J. Jonah Jameson mode from Spiderman, is a nice small treat as an unabashed tobacco peddler, and Robert Duvall has a nice mustachioed turn as a genteel Southerner who’s a tobacco baron in the vein of generations past. The only disappointment was Katie Holmes, who had the same shortcoming she had in Batman Begins: a fundamental lack of gravity. In Batman, she seemed too young and capricious to be a city attorney. Here she seems too young and guileless to summon the duplicity necessary for her character. Even the resolution of her ambitious journalist is unsatisfying because of this, a damn shame because it was very, very funny. We know that she can at least muster jaded and weary, as she did in the underrated Go, but there’s not a trace of grit in her this time. Fortunately, this is an ensemble cast, so it’s a relatively small blemish on a truly enjoyable movie. Not even her torpid performance can mar this gem. Instead, it soars anyway, making a strange little creature of a film: a feel-good, thought-provoking picture in which mean old demonized tobacco becomes a symbol of freedom. And Eckhart is so convincing as a master of BS that more than a few people in the audience will walk out wanting to have a smoke in the name of liberty and personal responsibility. If no tobacco companies had a financial stake in this, they should at least get together and send Fox a fruit basket and a nice card. And it’s a good point they make. With V for Vendetta out too, it’s a surprisingly fine time for subversion in the mainstream cinema. Do yourself and our country a favor and go see something smart before summer takes over and the theaters are filled with an epidemic of explosions. Bottom Line: Two lungs up! |
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