Movie candyman A. Lane has just revealed more info about Waris Singh Ahluwalia’s part in Spike Lee’s new film Inside Man. He reports in the New Yorker that Ahluwalia plays Vikram Walia, a Sikh hostage in a bank heist who’s disrespected by the cops coming to save him. It’s his second character named Vikram:
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Magazine photo shoot: two hours Sauntering around armor room in a cape: priceless |
The more it sags as a thriller, the more it jabs and jangles as a study of racial abrasion. A hostage is released, and an armed cop shouts, “He’s an Arab!” The hostage replies, “I’m a Sikh,” and you can hear the weariness at the edges of his fear…“Grand Illusion” offered the ennobling suggestion that national divisions were delusory, and that our common humanity can throw bridges across any social gulf. To which Lee would reply, Nice idea. Go tell it to the guy who just had his turban pulled off by the cops. [Link]
… the ethnic vaudeville is pure Spike…. in-your-face all the time: Inside Man resounds with stray assertions of irate identity like… “What the fuck—give me my turban!” The latter demand, delivered by a Sikh bank employee to the cops who are questioning him, readily segues into a diatribe against post-9-11 profiling, the onrushing complaint coming to an abrupt bada-boom when [Denzel] Washington’s partner (Chiwetel Ejiofor) dryly observes, “I bet you can get a cab, though.” [Link]
There are a couple of references to institutional racism and post-9/11 angst… [Link]
Imagine that, a caper flick which discards the cliché of only casting white or black actors:
Through the main protagonists and bank hostages, Lee presents a multi-racial panoramic view of New York at present. [Link]It may seem like a predictable cliche, especially to the director’s detractors, that he so intently underlines the ethnicity of even the most minor characters; ‘What the fuck — give me my turban!’much is made of the rainbow brigade that constitutes the hostage group: the white woman who talks loudly on her cell phone; the young Sikh hostage who, when released, strenuously complains of being mistaken for an Arab; the glam Albanian sexpot who knows how to play her cards, and the young black hostage whose ultraviolent “Kill Dat N*” computer game gives pause even to Russell. [Link]
Reena Shah (The Guru, American Chai) and Jay Charan also have parts in a large ensemble including Denzel Washington, Christopher Plummer, Jodie Foster, Willem Dafoe, Clive Owen and Chiwetel Ejiofor. ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ bookends the film, which means the Dil Se soundtrack lives on via Bombay Dreams and now Inside Man. With the Bombay instrumental theme in Lord of War, whoever’s advising Hollywood knows how to pick the hits.
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Reena Shah |
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Jay Charan |
The film is even hip enough to open with “Chaiyya Chaiyya,” one of the biggest Bollywood hits last year, then close with the same song remixed with rap. Very cool. [Link - thanks, tipster]Terence Blanchard’s score tends to the grandiose, although some Bollywood rap interludes are quite catchy. [Link]
Try eight years ago — the gorgeous Dil Se came out in 1998.
