Come anticipate Inside Man with me.

clive owen doing american accent = http://www.essaywhutman.com/images/BatistaThumbsDown1.gif

If Chiwetel Ejiofor doesn't become big in Hollywood it will be the ultimate proof that this world is unjust. Not only is he a good actor but he is so cool and handsome.

the film is a classic based on that line alone

One of at least two.

Spike has managed to alienate a pretty significant proportion of critics, to the point where his work gets slated out of hand by many. He's not a perfect filmmaker by any manner of means, but I think he deserves better.

The talking dog should've got it's own spin-off movie. I also saw a good interview with Spike where he staunchly defended the films, uh, wonky take on the NY punk scene of the time.

SPOILER SPACE
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- if he wanted Denzel to follow the trail and nail Plummer on his war crimes, why not just leave the file with a giant swastika stamped on the envelope? Clearly Owens doesn't need the protection then. How traceable is a diamond ring from the '30s anyway?

- how do the cops and the bank not notice that the store room is four feet smaller? What
did they do with the shelves lining the other walls? How do they not pull off all the boxes when they're searching for clues?

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ETC.

one small touch I enjoyed: when they're talking to Plummer in his office, the just barely out of focus shot in the background is Plummer with GHW Bush and Barb, then when it pans over a little bit, we see Plummer and Maggie Thatcher.

The Sikh interrogation was great, and I love Lee's ear for the casual profanity of working speech - shit and fuck aren't shocking or expletives or attention-drawing (as in, say, Tarantino), but just part of the personality. Other highlight, Owens and the kid talking in the vault. "I've got to talk to your father about that game..."

[SPOILER]
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*******...was this: how did clive know what was in the safe-deposit box containing the bank secret's most valued secret, locked away for 60 years and revealed to no one? (let alone why did the president KEEP his special nazi friendship certificate?)
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[END SPOILER YEAH]

Maybe the Nazi file just reveals one more lie on Plummer's part (he played it as pure greed rather than Nazi sympathy, maybe the file reveals more?).

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how long is spoiler space necessary on a heist picture?

what WERE they digging in the store room - a connection to the sewer to give him somewhere to shit?

A hole to shit in, yes.

B-b-but it is UNKNOWN! The box # isn't recorded anywhere in the bank! And knowing the guy's history how much of a leap is it to assume that it's something dirty from the war years and that Case isn't going to be leaping to his feet to make an insurance claim.

They found out that the box was missing on every piece of paper since the BANK'S CONSTRUCTION and that wouldn't be a GIANT RED FLAG that hey wait 1) there is stuff in there that someone wants to keep hidden and 2) it could be worth money and 3) if I get that stuff it'll be worth money to continue keep it hidden! I mean come on it's movie logic, so you've got to suspend a little disbelief, but seriously esp. given WHO owns the bank and WHAT his history was and WHO is likely to have had access to the vault at it's opening it's not exactly hard to infer who the box belongs to and what might be in there.

it's totally stretching it. plus, on a related note, why keep the nazi certificate but leave the ring?

this movie was dooooooooooooooooope!!! imo.

saw IM last night. when Denzel says to the Sikh hostage "but I bet you can get a cab" = classic NYC inter-racial humor

also liked this exchange

"look at your shoe"
"why"
"cause I've never seen anybody w/his foot so far up somebody's ass"

- WWII began over 65 years ago. If the old guy was a banker already then, how old is he supposed to be now? He didn't look like 100 years old.

- If he has papers that condemn him and say his whole empire was built on Nazi blood money, why the hell keep them in a deposit box instead of destroying them? And why hadn't he sold the diamonds? The ring was obviously traceable, but the other diamonds didn't seem to be.

- Cliwe Owen's character must've known the diamonds were there (though not necessarily the papers). You wouldn't arrange a bank robbery and a hostage situation that might get you years in jail based on the assumption that there is a secret deposit that just might contain something valuable. What if it contained the old guy's rabbit's paw? I can't see why the movie didn't bother to explain how he knew about the deposit. The rabbi thing could explain it, but the rabbi wasn't part of the robbers' team, was he? The bearded guy in their car was the hearing aid dude, not the rabbi.

But yeah, it seemed like both Spike Lee and the actors knew the plot was silly, and just decided to get the most out of it. Which was really quite enjoyable.

Is there really anything specific about the time period in the film? It could probably be any point in the last 20 years. (size of mobile phones aside).

- If he has papers that condemn him and say his whole empire was built on Nazi blood money, why the hell keep them in a deposit box instead of destroying them?

Because they're his conscience, he keeps them around to keep him honest. Destroying them would be giving himself a pass that he doesnt feel he's earned. Though if it's a choice between destroying them and making them public...

The bearded guy in their car was the hearing aid dude, not the rabbi.

Having seen the movie just now, I think you're wrong here, and this is the 'in' to how they know about the secret.

You're right about the water-tightness of the plot not being as important as the fact that it's a really good movie to watch, but I don't see the problems you're seeing.

See, had Spike Lee cast an actor other than Christopher Plummer this explanation would have been preposterous. As it is, I accept it because Plummer makes it clear that he's a man who's accepted the monstrous compromises he's made for the sake of power; but I remember leaning towards my friend while watching the movie and whispering, "With all his money, this old plutocrat doesn't own a paper shredder?"

I thought there was some good war-on-terror subtext that added up to more than just "Spike does Hollywood thriller." e.g. the Guantanamo type jumpsuits keep you from being able to tell who's good and who's bad, to find the bad guys you end up roughing up some of the innocents and violating their rights (like the Sikh bank employee), so everyone is under suspicion, etc etc.

it's coherent enough to be really entertaining, which is way more than i hoped for going in.

image link (huge file): http://www.livepoets.com/images/a3067d37-5d94-43bd-82fd-6cb637616f18_poet-image.jpg

Absolutely not. Lee telegraphs this reveal from the very beginning of the robbery: When Owen first approaches him in the lobby, he says something like, "You get the same treatment as everyone else, rabbi."

I watched this half-asleep and was underwhelmed for the first half, but wound up thinking it was more than OK. Yes, the plot is absurd, esp in retrospect (the NY/national media isn't going to go all wild when NO ONE is charged with a crime?), but the wit and mise en scene were the salvation.

The DVD has a very funny deleted vignette where Denzel, Ejiofor and a cop deconstruct the meaning of "No Woman No Cry."

way xposts

A number of the cops were bigot assholes? WOW, IMAGINE THAT.

re time -- yes, dates with "2005" appear onscreen several times. Christopher Plummer is about 85 so I figured he was a plausible Nazi collaborator, just barely.

Why did the other hostages not manage to identify -- or NOT-non-identify, if you get my drift -- the hostage-takers who wound up being interrogated as hostages?

TRUE/FALSE?

Saw this movie last weekend. It rocked. Didn't care that chunks of it don't hold up to logical scrutiny.

yes i agree with you on both points!

The implication at the end is that Denzel is totally gonna give her the ring, right? He mentions her expectation of a proposal several times. And we know he might not be a complete saint when it comes to crime scene evidence. Owen's closing voice-over about how he's OK with stealing from a Nazi bastard even lets you feel good about it. Kind of weird given Denzel's crusading attitude just a few minutes earlier. "Here honey, I want you to have this. It belonged to a family of Jews who were exterminated in Nazi death camps. I stole it from the crime scene of that bank. I love you!"

LOL at Spike's filming of women, as always.

And there were looong stretches of bad in this.

Willem Defoe in particular was just a non-entity.

There's a scene near the beginning where he's giving a walk-n-talk spiel to Denzel and Ejiofor and I swear to god he forgets his lines about halfway through. It's a complicated shot though and I guess they were just like "eh, whatever"

yeah it's pretty hilar because he just starts reciting lines from platoon and that madonna erotic thriller he did

I don't know, but he was doing a very convincing impression of a man picking up a check.

Also what was up with Denzel's cough? He has big coughs that interrupt his lines at two different points in the movie; he's like "excuse me!" and continues. Which led to... nothing. They're never mentioned. I figured there'd be some sort of "Pelham 123" sneeze reveal or something but no.

The interrogation scenes were a lot of fun though.

you don't remember the scene where he dies from tuberculosis?

haha yeah imo a character having a persistent cough that doesn't foreshadow some illness to be revealed later is a big plus

Normally I'd agree but this movie was supposed to be tight and slick. It's all about little clues. I know where you're coming from though - it would have been great to have the looseness of the interrogation scenes (a lot of which must have been improvised) throughout.

I misread this thread title and thought I was supposed to anticipate the movie adaptation of this:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3616/3364310364_16899c6301_m.jpg

Fyi this is on Netflix you should watch it