Inside Man (2006)

Everyone has something to hide, and sometimes the most dangerous secrets are locked away in the most respectable places. Spike Lee scored the biggest box-office hit of his career with "Inside Man," an unconventional thriller filled with fascinating details around the edges of its twisty plot. Russell Gewirtz's first screenplay could have used a few more rewrites; it moves briskly, but looking back, a lot of it doesn't add up. That makes it more fun to watch than to think about afterward, when you notice plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. Still, it's strangely absorbing, as NYPD hostage negotiator Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) tries to outwit Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), a brilliant bank robber who, with a highly disciplined crew, has taken over a Manhattan bank. What starts out looking like a standard hostage crisis soon turns into a personal mission to expose a dark secret hidden inside the bank's vault, one tied to its powerful founder, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer). As you'd expect from the director of "Do the Right Thing," Lee seizes several opportunities to explore post-9/11 issues of racial profiling and fears of terrorism, and the mysterious power broker Madeline White (Jodie Foster), as chillingly sinister as she is vaguely defined, deserves a movie of her own. Working with his most impressive cast yet, including Willem Dafoe and Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lee seems more interested in character than in tightly engineered suspense, but it's still engrossing, subtly funny and quirky enough to make a welcome change from the formulaic thrillers Hollywood churns out.