Jodie Foster

Inside Man: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Mesmerizing Jodie Foster

by Joi

Inside Man with Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, and Jodie Foster is probably one of my favorite Denzel Washington movies.  It’s definitely my favorite Clive Owen movie – I think this is his best role ever.  He seemed to have a lot of fun with the character (Dalton Russell).  In fact, I’d love to see the actor play more villains. It seems to be something he relishes.

I also loved Jodie Foster in this movie. As Madeleine White, she oozed sex appeal and her performance and presence can only be called mesmerizing. Personally, I think she all but stole the movie.  Fellow Jodie Foster fans will rank this as one of their favorite movies on Foster’s performance alone.  She proved, even with a role that didn’t take up a lot of screen time (not nearly as much as you’d like for it to) that she is one of the most powerful actresses ever.  When she’s onscreen, she doesn’t just command attention, she demands it – subtly but oh so powerfully!

The star of course, however, is Mr. Denzel Washington.  He was flawless (as always) in the lead role as NYPD Detective Keith Frazier.  The viewer has no problem at all believing that he is a New York detective.  Whatever character this actor takes on is 100 percent believable – he becomes the character through and through.  The A list celebrity and award-winning actor loses himself entirely in the role.  All that is left is the character and his story, without a trace of Denzel Washington to be found.  It’s one of the reasons he’s a favorite actor of mine – as well as the rest of the world’s!

Another star of the movie was William Dafoe as Captain John Darius.  He played a gritty, hardened captain of police and, like Denzel Washington, he was 100 percent believable.

Lost fans will also recognize Ken Leung (Miles on Lost) in a small role.  As someone who is missing Lost like mad, it was GREAT to see a familiar face!

Spike Lee directed Inside Man and did an exceptional job.  He also directed the masterpiece that was Malcolm X – also starring Denzel Washington.  Often Spike Lee comes across as angry, controversial, and extremely outspoken.  Personally, I think most pioneers in their chosen fields come across this way.  I believe the ones that go on to greatness take these emotions and use them as the vehicle that drives them to success.  Two of the best-directed movies I can think of (Malcolm X and Inside Man) were directed by Spike Lee, so there you go.  Love him or hate him (or somewhere in between), the man’s darn good at what he does.

Inside Man
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Spike Lee scored his biggest hit to date with Inside Man, an unconventional thriller with fascinating details in the margins of its convoluted plot. The screenplay (by first-timer Russell Gerwitz) could’ve used a few more rewrites; it moves at a brisk pace but in hindsight a lot of it doesn’t make sense. That makes Inside Man more fun to watch than to think about afterwards (when you discover plot holes big enough to drive a truck through), but it’s curiously involving, especially as NYPD Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) struggles to outsmart a high-stakes bank robber (Clive Owen) who, along with a well-trained crew of accomplices, has seized control of a Wall Street bank, turning what initially looks like a hostage crisis into a personal crusade to expose some mysterious evil secrets. As you might expect from the director of Do the Right Thing, Lee seizes several satisfying opportunities to examine post-9/11 issues of racial prejudice and domestic terrorism, and the mysterious “problem solver” Madeline White (Jodie Foster), as eerily sinister as she is vaguely defined, is worthy of her own movie. With the benefit of his most stellar cast to date (including Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor), Lee seems more interested in character details than well-crafted suspense, but that doesn’t stop Inside Man from being engrossing, subtly amusing, and quirky enough to qualify as a welcomed break from the formulaic thrillers that are Hollywood’s bread and butter.–Jeff Shannon

Product Description

Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, Academy Award nominee Clive Owen and Academy Award winner Jodie Foster star in this intense and explosive crime thriller. The perfect bank robbery quickly spirals into an unstable and deadly game of cat-and-mouse between a criminal mastermind (Owen), a determined detective (Washington), and a power broker with a hidden agenda (Foster). As the minutes tick by and the situation becomes increasingly tense, one wrong move could mean disaster for any one of them. From acclaimed director Spike Lee comes the edge-of-your-seat, action-packed thriller that The Wall Street Journal calls “a heist film that’s right on the money.”

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