Inside Man : Much more than Chaiyya Chaiyya
There are movies you walk out of, never to return back. And there are movies you just keep popping out, and flying in to catch a few scenes before ejecting right out.
And then, there are movies which hold you tight from the start to end. And keep bringing you back to it, and there you are… each re-watch of the movie brings to light new meanings, hidden in the corner subtlety, a new wow in the 46th minute you missed the first time.
In short, you’ve been enslaved by the movie. And in order of hypnotic impact – it begins with the story, visuals, performances, dialogue, music – all blanketed in the directors intelligent handling of his writer’s screenplay.
Inside Man is one such movie that keeps pounding me again and again.
Now to begin with it’s made by Spike Lee, who’s filmography as a director consisted of films that are quite political and many of the mainstream outright commercial watching audience may just not be the target customer for his products.
But Inside Man has Lee bringing in that amazing balance of intelligence (which his films have always been) and a commercial story. Lee shows how easy (or perhaps the genius of Lee makes it look easy) it is to make a outright commercial thriller plot – use it as a cover or coating underneath which is pumped in brain thumping adrenalin of politics, razor sharp characterizations, zip and cut dialogues all bound with a very very intelligent sprinkling of shots, scenes, their handling, the overlaps, the blink and you miss the undercurrent thoughts.
Most importantly, it raises questions and then you get the answers, and at times you get the answers and then you ask yourself Oh WOW! I didn’t realize the moved this way because of this
Example:
The gang asks everyone to strip down and then wear those boilers suits. At that point either you are just going with the flow of the story, or questioning Why are they doing this? or perhaps the pro-active cine goer is going Ok so what will this segeway to? The answer comes in the last 30 minutes.
Or the overlapping of the Armenian speech from Denzel and the cops listening to the recording to the scene where one of the robbers is having pizza. Until then Denzel and the cops are still trying to figure it out – ALONG WITH YOU – but Spike has so subtly relayed in that one overlap the answer to you the viewer (which I got it on the second viewing of the movie), which the cops figure out a couple of scenes later.
Spike Lee, all throughout the movie not just shows his intelligence in the execution of the script, but also how effortlessly he handles and above all PLAYS with the viewer.
Either one gets this or not. Those who haven’t, found Inside Man to be just about fine. Those who did get to see all those lights bursting out of those creeks and cracks were stumped!
It is so easy to story a bank robbery or a hostage situation. It is done and still is again and again in movies both in Bombay and Hollywood. Either you walk out of these easy fast food-ish stories or rush to get your dose of aspirin after the show ends.
No one wants to take the pain, to put in an effort on the story and more importantly in the ‘EXECUTION OF STORY’ in any of such heist thrillers. Why? Spike Lee, sure makes it looks easy… but you can clearly see a lot of effort went into the story and it’s execution.
Pretty much every second person I meet from Bombay’s film industry throw at me the line “Do you know how tough it is to make and shoot a movie?” Sure it is. But the tough work is hammered on getting stars, locations, foreign shoots, 150 dancers from East Europe, to titillate, to make the screen look all rosy and glossy and of course the publicity.
Where is the effort on the basic core of the movie? Where is the intelligence in executing that core?
The Story.
Spike Lee shows how it is done. Atleast for me. For Inside Man is one movie that in the last three years has left me spell bound. Children of Men, Pan’s Labyrinth, Black Friday are a few others.
Right from the first shot, Lee throws the challenge at you. Right in the very first frame. Try solving the puzzle before I tell you – it’s a game between you and him – and the game begins when Clive Owen looks right at you in the VERY FIRST SHOT and says something like –
“Listen to me carefully, because I choose my words carefully… I’m about to tell you…”
and how fantastic was the closing the loop of that opening sentence when in the end Clive Owen goes “I had asked you to listen carefully…”
That was it. That was the challenge. OH DAMN IT WHY DID I BLINK. or you may go SHIT WHY DIDN’T I REALIZE THAT.
- Here’s a video of the trailer that begins with exactly the scene I’m talking about above
The story is sprinkled with clues all over. ALL OVER!!! Dammit and all you had to do is just LISTEN… but your hyperactive filmi brain goes in all other directions. For example in the scene where Denzel questions Owen “How are you gonna get away with the money?” to which Owen announces “I’m gonna walk out of the front door”
To this your over-imaginative-beat-the-filmmaker-at-his-own-game-brains are going So he’s gonna blow the front door open, bombing all around, smoke all over Or they are thinking Man, this is going to be a tragic ending, they are going to make a dash out the bank and the cops and them will be shooting all around
By jove… “Listen to my words carefully” – if only we did.
Of course the icing on the cake is the surprise for the East Indian watcher right after Owen’s challenge – when the movie begins with Rehman’s score “Chaiyya Chaiyya” in the background as the van is driven from one point to the next collecting the entire gang to its destination.
And the humor!
Spike Lee hits bulls eye. Using his political comments and then showing you the humor of seeing it from the other side… that needs brains, not a dvd player to watch original content and package it as your own as is done by easy lazy “we work hard to make movies” filmmakers. These are the reasons why movie copying is not about “Oh since the movie has not been watched by many in India, so it was good they copied and showed it to us, else we would never have seen such a wonderful story” – NO NO NO … It is not about that entirely. It’s about the Intellectual Property. The Right to own something that came from your brain and if someone wants to use it – Buy it, License it… Don’t FUCKING COPY IT WITHOUT PAYING A SINGLE CENT TO THE BRAINS WHO INVENTED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Mercifully Inside Man has not been copied by Bollywood, and hopefully it won’t be, since the fine silken threads laced in the story will appear invisible to the copycats who may have found it an ordinary bank robbery of a story.
Coming back to Lee making a political statement and then using humor, check out the scene where the robbers let go of one hostage. An employee of the bank. Who’s a Sikh.
After being clobbered down on the street by the SWAT team he is brought in for questioning in the cafe opposite the bank. The Sikh is nursing his bruise, his turban is gone in the scuffle where the cops pinned him down thinking he was one of the robbers. Denzel, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Willem Dafoe are trying to get him to talk about what’s happening inside the bank, while the Sikh is complaining about the treatment given to him by the cops… which went something like this
Sikh : I need my turban
Denzel: We’ll get your turban, we’ll get you to the hospital but first we need to know what’s going on inside, how many are they, how may hostages…
Sikh: I don’t know. I need my turban. After 9/11 I’m looked upon as a terrorist. I’m always pulled at the airport for “random” search…. I can’t do this, I can’t do that
Denzel: But I bet you can get a cab though!
Genius. In that one scene Lee delivers two things. His political comment – the turban is not important for Americans, while it holds so much more for the one’s wearing them – in short the US does not care for things held so dear by people of other cultures and religions – and then Lee does the flip – the view from the other side in the tongue in cheek way when Denzel slaps the statement “I bet you can get a cab thought”… pure genius.
Of course the various threads elevate the story to impossible heights. For when the NY Power Bitch, Jodie Foster (such a detailed character design in just 3 scenes is an amazing achievement) walks in at the request of the president of the Bank, to barter a trade with the robbers under the radar and away from the sight of the cops just twists and turns the plot. For a moment you think, damn where is this going or perhaps the fear that Lee is about to lose the plot, you are slapped with slight glimpses of the dark past of the Bank’s president played by Christopher Plummer.
The other thread about the investigation in to Denzel’s involvement in money laundering which may damage his career and his promotion. On the face of it, to looks just that. Another thread in the story. Maybe it was used to add more meat to the plot. Yet, Lee uses this to create doubts in the minds of the viewer. Is Denzel all clean? Maybe he isn’t? Maybe he’s gonna shake hands under the table with the robbers… or maybe he’ll strike a secret deal with the President of the bank to keep the President’s dirty secret. I tell YA… Lee has you thinking, your head spinning in each and every scene.
And of course any discussion of the movie is incomplete without touching on the story flow. Here Lee so seamlessly starts with the present – Clive Owen talking to you, moves to past – The robbery begins, moves to present – cops questioning each of the hostages in B/W – and then jumping between the past and the present – the questioning of hostages. These back and forth scenes move so well that now when something happens during the hostage crisis you look forward to Lee moving to the present where you hope the cops will ask that hostage something because you think something is amiss and BAM – NEXT SHOT – THE COPS ARE QUESTIONING THAT HOSTAGE! Brilliant!
Movies that are watched often fall in my books, broadly into three categories
1. They are on Television and hence you watch it cause there’s nothing better to do. So you end up watching shit like Paapi Gudiya a dozen times
2. You liked the movie and would like to relive that experience
3. Questions, Answers, More Questions, More Answers, Trap, Dash, Solve, Trapped again, Question, Fun, Engrossed, How the hell?, Answers, Answers, More Observations…
Inside Man, as you can tell, falls in the third category for me…
I still watch it today and I still come across scenes that hold new meaning or get to notice moments and dialogues that possess such a subtle-under-the-radar meaning that I missed it in the dozen viewings of the movie done so far… and I go WTF! Why didn’t I notice that!
And that is the pure genius of Spike Lee brought out in all force for the movie goer like you and me… Rent it or buy a copy today. It’s now available in Blu-Ray.
Tags: Denzel Washington, Hollywood, Inside Man, Spike Lee
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Inside man – Cool movie and The cast cannot be any better
Denzel, Clive Owen, Jodie, Willem Dafoe – and the way they have acted – no unnecessary buildup and matter of fact. The cell – misdirection was totally awesome.
Even the title is a giveaway, still we dont see it coming…just awesome….
who is an “East Indian watcher”?? People from northeast, west bengal??
@ Oz –
so much praise for the movie & Spike Lee and no mention of the screenwriter? This is what I call the conspiracy against screenwriters.
Let me break it down for you.
Inside Man was a spec screenplay by Russel Gerwitz. It was a first screenplay by a Hollywood outsider who was in his 40s when he wrote it. He had an agent friend whom he pitched the opening Clive Owen monologue and title to, and the agent said he’s onto something. write it.
Russell wrote the script and it did the rounds of studios. A lot of folks expressed interest. At some point, it was bought and they brung in other writers to hack it.
several directors were attached at some point and russell was completely out of the picture. By now several drafts have been done, and Spike Lee ACCIDENTALLY gets the original draft, and sees that it is a thriller and has elements that he can expolit into a NY film.
he figures this can also be a very commercial film while still giving it his own flavor. he signs up for it, and they give him the latest draft. he reads it, says it’s crap, wants to go back to the original draft, and bring the original writer.
So Russell Gerwitz is back on and he gets a written by credit for his debut, which is an amazing feat if you know how studios operate.
Now, the mechanics of it. The two lead detectives were written white. Spike Lee makes them black. Jodie Foster is a guy. He makes it a woman. Most of the plot and dialogue are from the original script with few spike lee touches,
like the black kid that’s a hostage playing a violent video game and owen says something about it. Lee wanted to make a comment about violence in video games. the whole sikh guy thing, was written after they cast Walia, who happened to know Lee through some new york connection. “Bet you can get a cab though” was ad libbed by Denzel (that’s the story, don’t know if it’s true. directors and stars are notorious for stealing credit from screenwriters)
and Lee picked chaiyya because someone had left him some rahman cds, and he liked this.
how do i know all this? i attended a Q&A with the writer.
as for not knowing how they are going to get out…i knew. you know why? Ocean’s 11 – Clooney says the same thing. They’re just going to walk out, so whenh Clive Owen said they’re going to walk out, and with the title, I knew that he was going to stay in there.
Very enjoyable movie nonetheless. Don’t think it needs that many viewings to unearth subtxt or plot points.
@dabba
You should read Gerwitz’s script for Righteous Kill. It’s a piece of dehydrated turd. That movie is gonna stink soo bad its gonna be the next Gigli.
@ mitch –
i’ll read it. is it available online? he was talking about this film at the Q&A. I don’t rate him as a good writer. just wanted to give credit where due. he was the it boy for a brief period because inside man became a hit. he’ll probably go on to have a creer doing re-writes.
at this point anyone that casts pacino and de niro together, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
great film, great review. It’s more fun each time you watch it. definitely worth a blu ray buy.
@dabba, darn… I was supposed to publish Part 2 where I was going to focus on the screenwriter… but you have done more than that… and I didn’t know the inside story of the inside man…
IMDB has listed a sequel to the Inside Man as of now…
It was but the studio took it off. The twist in the tale ending is so bad it made me choke on my philly cheese steak. It’s almost as bad as 88 Mins. also directed by Jon Avnet.
i thought it was a average hiest movie at best . the justification for the robbery itself – christopher lambert’s nazi character’s wrong doings during world war etc was implausible and as the above poster said laughable.
I saw the movie a couple of years back and remember thinking that its a shitty movie…hardly remember much of it now…except that while watching it I felt as if it was full of cliches…
I saw this movie again and couldn’t help noticing little things here and there.
There is a shot of Dalton (Clive Owen) standing holding his hands against the circular vault to money chamber which is kept open. He is shown strangely as a silhoutte and the image closely reminds one of the painting of the perfect man encircled – (is it leonardo or michaelangelo?).
Many such shots which are seemingly unnecessary are thrown in between the story and one wonders why