Getting Into Inside Man

Recently I watched Inside Man. This is the story of a bank robbery that turns into a hostage situation. There are a lot of good actors in this movie. Spike Lee is obviously a talented director. Overall the movie is pretty compelling and there's an intenseness to it that that's almost palpable. The film isn't without it's flaws, but somehow the direction and performances of the actors make you forget that fact and you just come away feeling that this was a really well done movie.

There's a lot of stuff in play throughout this movie. But it doesn't all have a coherent feel to it. Jodi Foster's character appears to play a pretty big part, but ultimately I really didn't see what role her part played in all this at all. In fact, looking back I still don't see what her role in this was other than a high profile female actor in the credits, which might explain why her role in the movie serves no purpose and seems to have been shoehorned into the script.

And since it's a Spike Lee film, you get a couple of little social commentary scenes interjected throughout the movie. There's a scene with a kid and a video game that stands out. And there's an incident with one of the hostages that turns into a commentary on racial profiling. It's all these little details that Spike Lee adds to the film (at least I assume these were additions by him since they don't advance the plot in any significant way) that really make the film compelling.

That said, there are a couple of big hurdles to get past such as the age of one of the characters, but that doesn't really become an apparent issue until after the fact. Then there's the fact that an amazing amount of nothing seems to happen throughout the film. And it uses the flashback method of storytelling where we're initially getting narration from Clive Owen explaining to you what happened, so you know he's going to make it through the film. In fact, the time line stuff is a bit odd since the majority of the movie occurs in the past and has moments of the present spliced in. Some of the interrogation scenes that are in the present that are spliced in are some of the most compelling mini moments in the film, but sadly some of the bits and pieces in those interrogation scenes don't have the full impact of what Denzel and his partner are doing until after the the end of the movie.

And today was the last day of no school for the kids. Tomorrow it's back to the grind. Quinn's already depressed about this. They spent part of the day today hanging out with Gretchen, Autumn and Tyler and I believe they even had lunch at Red Robin (shocking, I know). Ginger did report that Quinn was a bit excessive today in trying to get his way with some things (trying to get Ginger to take him bowling, or buy him a toy, or go by the toy store, or do something else). Not sure what we're going to do about that, but it certainly feels like Quinn hasn't learned to appreciate what he has. He's showing some of the signs of being a Cornucopia Kid, but not all the signs, but enough that's it has me concerned.