There and Gone

When it comes to caper films, the twist can make or break a film. Yes, you have to have good production values, a strong cast, solid cinematography, and everything that goes into making a good movie. If you don't have those most audiences are going to fail to even make it to the big twist at all. But when it comes to the actual caper itself, the criminals have to pull of something spectacular, a caper that really wows the audience. If you don't have that then you really have nothing and the film calls apart.

Inside Man -- written by Russell Gewirtz, directed by Spike Lee, and released in March of 2006 -- is that kind of caper. It's a film about a bank robbery but it keeps everyone in the audience guess, start to finish, about what really is going on during the heist. In fact, the heist itself is secondary to the real shenanigans of the film; the criminals seem almost disinterested in the actual financial gains to be had from the bank they invade. There's a larger mystery at play, a plan that never spells itself out right up until suddenly everything is revealed. It's a master class in caper twists, to be sure, and it's one that really does work the first time you watch the film.

The one issue I have with the movie is that, once you've seen it and you see how the whole plot plays out, the film loses a certain amount of its gusto. I saw this film soon after it came out originally and then didn't watch it again until right before writing this article. That's 17 years since its original release. And yet, the twist is so memorable that it stuck with me and, all this time later, going in, I felt just a little bored by the proceedings. That's not to say that it's a bad film by any stretch but it's at its most effective when you don't know what's going on. Once you know the twist, once the reveal is, well, revealed, the film just isn't as interesting anymore.

Why is that? The simplest answer is that to make the film work the "villains" of the piece (the bank robbers) have to remain cyphers. The film purposefully positions them as mysterious figured, very rarely revealing they faces and never actually giving us their names or motivations. We have to treat the robbers as a faceless mob, which is kind of the point of the whole caper (which, despite it's 17 years of existence, I still won't spoil). For the bit reveal to work so much of the actual story of the film has to be kept as a mystery. All we know is there are some robbers who take over a bank and two detectives -- Denzel Washington as Detective Keith Frazier and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Detective Bill Mitchell -- have to negotiate a peaceful conclusion to the stand off.

Lacking specific villains, once we can understand and maybe even relate to, doesn't necessarily hurt the film the first time around. Washington and Ejiofor do a solid job as our charismatic leads, carrying through the whole of the case as it happens. The film gives us a very "man on the street" vibe to the whole film (credit to Spike Lee for that) and it allows us to stay invested in the cops, their job, and the caper even while we really only get one side of the story. That the film is able to keep us invested, on the first viewing, despite only getting half the information speaks to the strength of the script and the director.

It does hurt the film on repeat viewings, though, as you really want to be able to feel more on the robbers side of things. If we go back to one of the perennial caper favorites, Ocean's Eleven, that film gives us a whole cast of criminals to root for such that, even when we know their plan and how they pull it off we still want to go back and hang out with them time and again. Inside Man, as slick and well produced as it is, doesn't have that repeat viewing hook. We're missing that crucial ingredient to make audiences want to go back, time and again, to see the whole caper again and again.

The fact that the criminals are pretty brutal during their caper certainly is a knock against them. They push people around, beat a man pretty bad, threaten violence and death, all in the name of getting their rewards. While the film eventually reveals a kind of "less of two evils" objective to their caper that doesn't change their actions in the moment. They come across as hardened criminals and it's hard to accept them pulling off a caper and, worse, maybe even getting away with it (again, not spoiling anything). By not investing more in the robbers in the moment the film leaves them as shadowy villains and you don't want to watch that repeatedly.

Certainly, the fact that the film struggles to determine if they're really good guys or bad guys hurts matters. The film takes a very weird angle with the robbers, obviously treating them like villains but also (due to that "lesser of two evils" motivation) sort of cheering them on as well. Maybe that's because the solution to their caper is absolutely brilliant (and it is, make no mistake) and the film is just in love with what they're doing, but that still doesn't make for the most watchable group of people, especially on repeat viewings.

Meanwhile, the film also tries to make Detective Frazier out to be something less than a truly honest cop. I think the goal was to show that "everyone has a little dirt on them," this selling that "lesser of two evils" idea. So Frazier has a charge against him from I.A., having potentially stolen money from an active case, the film lets that dangle over his head the whole time. We actually don't get real resolution on this storyline for him, not really, which makes you wonder why it was brought up at all. It doesn't have relevance to the actual case at hand, the bank robbery, so it's just a superfluous detail that seems out of place. It makes us trust the detective less, so that's one less character we can care about when the film is desperate for anyone to latch onto.

In many ways the ambiguity of the film does stop of from achieving true greatness. To many characters are left shadowy, too many small plot threads are purposefully left unresolved. Maybe that's realistic but it doesn't make for a truly satisfying storyline, start to finish. It's possible some of these elements could have been resolved in a sequel, and one had been planned to would have picked up directly after the events of this film, but that never came to fruition (the actual sequel we eventually got is largely unrelated). Not finishing the details properly leaves too much baggage on a film, weighing it down.

Don't get me wrong, the caper itself is masterfully done. It does keep you wondering just what's going on as the criminals play the NYPD like an absolute fiddle. All the little twists and turns in the movie are great, and the resolution of the whole caper is one for the history books. In that regard, Lee absolutely hit this movie out of the park (which explains why this is his most successful film to date). And yet, going back and watching the film again, the cracks do show. Things don't feel quite right on repeat viewings and its hard to invest any any of the people here or what they're doing. Do I want the criminals to get away with their misdeeds? No, but I can see why the film thinks they should.

The ambiguity is by design, a purposeful choice by the production team. I get it, I understand it, and I even liked it the first time I watched Inside Man. It just doesn't work for me when I went back to watch the film again. A twisty and interesting caper falls apart once you see the wizard behind the curtain and realize there's a lot less there than you expected.