When I was an earnest young man, or anyway, somewhat less of a cynical crank than I am now, I used to suffer through Spike Lee movies, figuring that I was in some way atoning for the sins of...well, not my personal ancestors, since they were piss-poor potato people in another country, but, you know, the sins of people who looked like me.
And then, eventually, I either got more comfortable in my whiteness or more confident in my critical abilities and I went, "Oh, shit! This guy's movies suck! I don't have to like them just because I'm a guilty white guy!" It was as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. I believe this was some time after Girl 6. Making a movie about phone sex that's far more tedious than titillating takes some doing, but ol' Spike managed it.
But, I did keep my eyes out for those of his movies which are criticized for being "too Hollywood." Not surprisingly, these are the ones that are actually watchable: Malcolm X, Clockers, and now Inside Man, which I watched last night.
Yeah, it kind of fell apart at the end, but, overall, it was a really clever, taut thriller. Yes, there were some rather gaping plot holes, but you don't watch a movie like this hoping that the McGuffin makes complete sense. It didn't, and I didn't really care. One thing you can say about Spike Lee is that he does get good performances out of people, and Denzel Washington is great in this movie. He strikes a weird balance between Noble Denzel (too many movies to count) and Psycho Denzel (Training Day, maybe that new one.) Yes, he's a movie cliche-- the tenacious detective who never knows when to quit, but instead of it being out of a noble dedication to the truth, it's more because he's kind of a dick who doesn't like to lose. Overall, an enjoyable couple of hours at the movies, and for the most part Spike Lee got out of the way and seemed to be trying to entertain his guilty white fans instead of hectoring them.
I don't know if this is the screenplay or the direction, but I liked the way all the different ethnicities and cultures of New York were just part of the background of this movie. It wasn't a big deal to the plot, but it was just like, well, if this movie is taking place in New York, there are going to be all kinds of languages and cultures bumping into each other.
And only one annoying arty directorial touch that wrecks a key scene, which is a huge improvement over Spike's usual work. At a key stressful moment, Denzel goes running up to the bank under siege, except he doesn't run. I guess he rides the camera dolly, but it kind of looked like he got really mad and mounted his Segway to scoot up to the bank doors. It looked incredibly silly and totally took me out of the movie, but, like I said, knowing it's a Spike Lee movie, I was stoked that it only happened once.
