Critics reviews

Far from the supposedly impersonal flick it was billed as, Inside Man did not put on hold the investigations into racial frictions Lee’s 1989 classic had only just begun—in fact, it expanded the discussion on a markedly different, and far more complex time and space: a post-9/11 New York seen through the prism of the world’s financial capital.

Beat for beat, Inside Man is generic stuff, but its twists are so historically and politically loaded that it could only really be a Spike Lee joint.

The script, by first-timer Russell Gewirtz, is skintight (for a Lee film), and Lee's filmmaking is playful yet unusually calm.

It consists, mostly, of people just talking to each other, the sort of movie that shows the kind of energy and attention to detail that, say, Sidney Lumet brought to "Dog Day Afternoon," one of Lee's inspirations for this picture.

"Inside Man" is a jolt, partly because it comes equipped rather incongruously with the name of Mr. Lee's company, 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks, but mostly because this is the kind of seamless diversion that should be a stock item in Hollywood, but isn't.

This enjoyable exercise in popcorn pyrotechnics demonstrates that Lee can be relied on to attack the clichés set before him with gusto.