Spike Lee is best known for racially and politically charged dramas like Do the Right Thing, He Got Game, Da 5 Bloods, and BlacKkKlansman. While these are some of the films that he might be best remembered for, he was not above more studio-friendly fare. In 2006, he also made one of the slickest heist films of that decade with Inside Man, starring his frequent collaborator Denzel Washington (who also stars in his newest film Highest 2 Lowest) as a New York City detective tasked to negotiate with a gang of thieves led by Clive Owen after they take hostages in a Wall Street bank.
The film begins with Clive Owen in full frame, explaining that he has executed the perfect bank heist and wants to tell us about it; the rest of the film follows Washington (along with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe) as they attempt to figure out what Owen’s plan is as it unfolds. As an added wrinkle, the bank’s proprietor (played by Christopher Plummer) has a secret hidden in that particular branch and hires a fixer (played by Jodie Foster) to protect it. Yes, these two plots are related. No, I won’t tell you how.
Link: https://thisisforreel.com/home/spike-lee-retrospective-inside-man
Spike Lee Retrospective: “Inside Man” | ForReel
