Inside Man vs Quick Change

Any time a movie’s full of big stars, you’ll hear people talking about its great cast. But there’s a difference between a movie with a great cast, and a movie that is well cast. Con-Air has a great cast; Sideways is well-cast. Spike Lee, more often than not, directs movies that are appropriately and imaginatively cast, and with Inside Man he’s done it again. Oh, and he’s got one hell of a great cast too.

Denzel Washington stars as Keith Frazier, a detective who is actually not near retirement, and a couple decades away from being too old for this shit. Does he know he’s in a movie? He’s also a major suspect in a check-cashing fraud case, where a hundred grand or so has gone missing. A bank is being robbed downtown, and he’s given the case, much to his surprise (along with his partner, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is so good, I promise to try really hard at learning to correctly pronounce his name). When they arrive on the scene, they’re assigned a crew of police officers, including Willem Dafoe and the absolutely perfectly cast Ashlie Akinson (compare her to the casting of Eva Longoria as a Secret Service agent in The Sentinel for further evidence of the different types of “good” casting. If she’s Secret Service, who’s the President? David Spade? Is anyone from Charmed on the Supreme Court?) There’s a bit of a power struggle, but soon Keith is in charge, trying to figure out how to make the robbers think they’re having their demands met, without having to actually meet any of them aside from a couple stacks of pizzas.

The bank is being robbed by four guys named Steve, although we know they are aliases, because a. one of the Steves is a chick, and b. one of them has already told us his name is Dalton Russell. Dalton is the mastermind behind the robbery, and is played by Clive Owen, who is perhaps the most relaxed criminal genius in film history. He never mugs or hams or snarls or spits or even shakes a fist. Owen is every bit as good as Washington (who rocks no matter what, but shows us new colors here. I think he’s better in this than in Training Day, and that got him an Oscar.), but subtler, more defeated. Some bad things have happened to Dalton Russell in his day, foremost being that he doesn’t appear to have gotten any sleep in about a month. He doesn’t actually seem to be robbing the bank. His crew gets in, takes hostages, finds the vault, and then begins an odd routine of digging, moving stuff around, and shuffling masked hostages from one office to another. The cops are confused, the hostages are getting hungry, and the Chairman of the Board of the bank (Christopher Plummer) is suspiciously worried about a particular safety deposit box in that vault. Which brings us to Jodie Foster.

I’m not exactly sure who or what Jodie Foster plays in Inside Man, other than her name is Madeline. She’s some sort of corporate cleaner, or maybe she’s Smithers to Plummer’s Burns. Regardless, she makes things happen for the very rich, and takes devilish delight in putting her lessers in their places. As Madeline, Foster rocks short skirts and high heels, and while she presents the usual Smart Jodie Foster, she’s also sexy, cunning, sarcastic, and just maybe as much an obstacle for Washington’s character as the robbers inside the bank. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Foster this bitchy, quick or fun. Also, and I know she’d probably hate this, but nice legs, Jodie.

There is a bad way to do this. Hostage, for example, is a bad way to do this. Red Eye is another movie that appears to be close, genre-wise, but with a sheen of cheese it can’t shake. Spike Lee, who has never made this sort of movie before, knows how to do it, with the big Hollywood thriller moments, but also his usual cycle of minority and social commentary, none of which is heavy-handed or preachy, and some of which is quite funny. Throughout the stand-off, we get flash-forwards of hostage and suspect interviews given after the crisis has ended. Each claims ignorance of any of the events leading up to the robbery. Washington is a trip in these scenes, listening sympathetically to each story, then quickly accusing the witnesses of being involved in the robbery, then laughing it off as a joke, then not. Washington has long been one of my favorite actors, but like Foster, he’s got new tricks on show in Inside Man. With his floaty tracking shots, grainy fourth-wall breaking narration, and light touch with the violence, Spike Lee proves he’s got a few new tricks of his own.

Quick Change is another bank heist movie with a great and appropriate cast, a lethargic ringleader, and a busy New York setting. Oh, and even though Quick Change is a comedy (a better one than you might remember), and Inside Man is a thriller with virtually no unintentionally funny moments, the bank robberies in the films are almost identical. Bill Murray plays Grimm, who robs a bank slowly, allowing the police to gather outside, then using the hostages to camouflage himself, so that neither the police nor the audience knows truly how many of the people involved are part of the crime, and when or if the leader will leave the bank.

Quick Change’s crew is one man smaller. Besides Murray, there’s Geena Davis and Randy Quaid. It’s Murray pre-Groundhog Day, so the comedy is broader and a little dumber, but the world-weariness was already in place, as was Murray’s full command of every single muscle in his face. His lip can twitch a hundred different ways, each with a different meaning. There’s a lot of business with them trying to get out of New York (the robbery is only the first third or so of the movie), and some of it is slappy (a guy tries to board a bus, but gets blocked by the guitar on his back, followed by me secretly laughing for the rest of the day and refusing to tell you why) but it’s mostly funny. You won’t find the social gravity of Inside Man, but do you really need that when you’ve got Randy Quaid crying in an alley, Bill Murray dressed as a clown, and Geena Davis riding shotgun? I didn’t think so.

Inside Man: A-

Quick Change: B