Inside Man Reviews
[A] wily thriller, which revitalizes a familiar premise by turning it inside out.
As unexpected as some of its plot twists is the fact that this unapologetic genre movie was directed by Spike Lee, who has never sold himself as Mr. Entertainment. But here it is, a Spike Lee joint that's downright fun.
Time Out
Top CriticA slick, kinetic and relatively straightforward -- which is to say enjoyably twisty-turny -- tranche of cat-and-mouse procedural.
I gloried in the sheer spectacle of Jodie Foster as Madeline White, an exquisitely groomed, fearlessly feline fixer striding on her high heels and her high horse into one supposedly perilous situation after another.
Even past the midway point, it's all working -- it's taut, it's funny, it's trenchant, it's stylish. And then it isn't.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Inside Man is a potboiler, but an intriguing one; perhaps Lee should go Hollywood more often.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Inside Man is an exercise in showy, cynical hollowness.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Exceptionally well written with clever twists and witty dialogue by first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz, Inside Man is adroitly executed by director Spike Lee.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Intercutting post-robbery interrogation scenes with the action at hand, makes Inside Man a substantial and satisfying affair.
| Original Score: 3/4
It's a leisurely stroll through the caper genre, with twists aplenty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Lee seems less interested in scoring easy sociological points than ratcheting up the stakes of Gewirtz's cunning heist scenario, which offers little in the way of wiggle room for latecomers.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Inside Man is the sort of movie that makes you think. The big star heist thriller is coiled in tricky turns of plot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Inside Man, a crackling, twisty thriller about a bank heist that shows he [Spike Lee] can make an expensive, mainstream movie that's every bit as well-crafted as the personal, arty films to which he has devoted most of his career.
| Original Score: 3/4
Lee takes the usual potshots at this stewpot of race, power and politics. Only here it's effective as part of the story, as opposed to when it's wielded like a tire iron in the context of a polemic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Unexpectedly funny, leisurely paced and oblivious to the demands of its genre, Inside Man has a loose, playful vibe that's at odds with its grave life-and-death scenario.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Inside Man may be a genre flick, but its direction is certifiably Lee -- sprinkled with trademark themes and visual cues, including his specialty, the strapped-to-a-factory-belt dolly shot.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Inside Man brings Lee back into the mainstream while still letting him have some fun, and he passes that fun on to the audience.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Inside Man gives us back the stuff that once made Lee's movies entertaining: the snappy, sassy dialogue, the hip attitude, the obvious insight into the racial divide.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Lee has directed Inside Man, a thriller with a big-league cast, a New York mind-set and some of the best storytelling the director has done to date.
| Original Score: B+
At just over two hours, Inside Man earns every minute of our tense curiosity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The basic story is elemental, but because Lee and Gewirtz invest it with grit, comedy, and a ton of New York ethnic personality, it's fresh anyway.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
With Inside Man -- an ostensibly straightforward, old-fashioned heist movie -- Spike Lee brings together the old New York and the new.
Inside Man is a deft and satisfying entertainment, an elegant, expertly acted puzzler that is just off-base and out-of-the-ordinary enough to keep us consistently involved.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The film grabs you from the beginning and never lets go.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Inside Man marries some ingenious caper ideas to Lee's superb feel for ethnic politics.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Inside Man, directed by Spike Lee, works because it takes a familiar setup a Wall Street bank heist that mutates into a hostage crisis and twists it ever so slightly.
| Original Score: 4/5
Here is a thriller that's curiously reluctant to get to the payoff, and when it does, we see why: We can't accept the motive and method of the bank robbery, we can't believe in one character and can't understand another.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
This one's a Spike-for-hire affair, a case of a flashy director juicing up a first-time screenwriter's efforts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Inside Man, which was scripted by Russell Gewirtz, is not a model of storytelling, even though it is somewhat redeemed by its fresh take and trick ending.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
The normally subversive Spike Lee takes a rare genial tack.
A deft, tense, pure thriller, the movie has great star turns and is brilliantly directed, but it began as an extremely well-crated screenplay by Russell Gewirtz.
The geometric precision with which this clever puzzle is laid out produces a picture whose sum exceeds its sometimes wayward parts.
| Original Score: 3/4
Viewers may be surprised at the smoothness with which the frequently bombastic Spike Lee navigates the mainstream.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
Nobody's on automatic here, least of all the director, who's probably delivered the most impersonal -- but smoothly Hollywood-style professional -- movie of his career.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Spike Lee's latest joint is a workmanlike thriller that provides solid performances; a mixture of comedy, tension, and drama; and an engaging storyline.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
In the age of low-budget independent grab-a-flicks, this high-powered waste of time proves what superior talents have to do now to collect an occasional big-studio Hollywood paycheck.
Inside Man is a hybrid of studio action pic and Spike Lee joint. Or else it's a cross between a 2006 Spike Lee joint and a 1970s-style movie indictment of urban unease.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
This enjoyable exercise in popcorn pyrotechnics demonstrates that Lee can be relied on to attack the clichés set before him with gusto.
Washington has the kind of star quality other actors would die for: unfakeable cool.
| Original Score: 3/4
The more it sags as a thriller, the more it jabs and jangles as a study of racial abrasion.
A flashy cast, clever script and vibrant showcasing of New York City as the ultimate melting pot are strong plusses for Spike Lee's most mainstream studio venture.
This is the mother lode all action/suspense directors search for and Lee, who usually doesn't work in that genre, has hit it.
