Last weekend I saw Inside Man, currently the top movie in America. In Spike Lee’s excellent caper mystery, actor Waris Singh Ahluwalia explains the significance of the Sikh turban, covering your head in the presence of god, to the largest American audience to date. It’s very cool of Lee to carve out screen time for this exposition, and more such movies might reduce Sikh harassment in America.
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The hollow men |
On the other hand, Denzel Washington’s rejoinder (‘Bet you can catch a cab…’) feels like shuffling, not dancing. I didn’t catch Ahluwalia’s smack-back because the audience was laughing too hard at the turban-cabbie joke. Ick. Ahluwalia gets the lion’s share of the desi actors’ screen time. Reena Shah has a couple of seconds as a hostage, and Jay Charan is barely seen as a bank teller.
The movie opens with ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ from Dil Se, and Punjabi MC raps over an orchestra-enhanced mix during the closing credits. The inclusion of ‘Chaiyya’ has nothing to do with Hindi samples in hip-hop or Bombay Dreams — Lee draws directly from the source (thanks, mallika). At some point desi influence in American pop culture will melt in so thoroughly, it won’t even be worthy of remark. Then the Uighur-Americans will start blogging about how poorly they’re represented in popular American culture. Viva la Uighur Mutiny.
Viva la
Uighur MutinyThe flick reminds me of Gurinder Chadha’s newer movies: it’s a thoroughly commercial film, a bid for mainstream relevance which still shouts out to the brotherhood (minorities, blue-collar workers, Brooklyn and polyglot NYC). It finesses the task of melding social commentary, such as a violent Grand Theft Auto parody, with product placements galore. As unfocused as it is, just one of Lee’s movies gives you more to chew on than three normal Hollywood flicks. Unlike Chadha’s work, Inside Man objectifies women as much as She Hate Me reportedly did, with an extended joke about big tits.
The movie name-checks ’70s cops ‘n robber movies like Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon and pulls some of those glorious, cheesy ’70s orchestral riffs and fast zooms, Munich-style homage. Lee once again uses his favorite shrinking-background, actor-on-a-track effect. But the movie is too slackly paced for an action flick, and none of the bank heist gang, who call each other variations on ‘Steve,’ work up physical presence or verbal menace. A lot of the interplay between criminal mastermind Clive Owen and police detective Washington feels less like a hostage negotiation than a coffee date.
As in Mississippi Masala, Washington is again in a flick with some desi themes. His preppy style, casually slurred tone and stepper gait make him marketable in the mainstream. He scans as a boyish, non-threatening black man, like Dave Chappelle and much of the Block Party crew (Mos Def, Common and Kanye West, as opposed to the more militant Dead Prez). But at his age and at this stage in his career, Washington just isn’t believable as a young rookie detective.
In contrast, Owen is the paragon of an amoral don. It feels like the last time I saw Owen smile was in Closer. And though he’s pot-bellied in a jumpsuit with a trick American accent, Owen still rocks. Lee also pulls in his loyalists including Kim Director and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was in She Hate Me with Sarita Choudhury. (This is also Ahluwalia’s second movie with Willem Dafoe.)
The movie has such weak, dilatory action atmospherics, even revealing a couple of the robbers’ tricks up front wouldn’t have changed much. Where it really scores is with its Usual Suspects-style mental game. Inside Man flips the plan not once but twice, doubling back into what you were told not to expect. It also leaves a solution in plain sight, dropping clues about the final gambit in the opening scene.
Over and over, Lee proves he’s still a punk. The robbers turn the power structure’s tactics against itself by nicking a ploy from the police. In retaliation, Washington breaks the chief robber’s rhythm by assaulting him when he least expects. The only part that doesn’t work for me is the lengthy, absurdly wordy exposition by the Man (Christopher Plummer) towards the end of the movie. It’s all too Scooby-Doo-ish: ‘And I would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you kids…’
The multilayered film title is as much a riddle. On the surface, it’s just the argot of criminals. After watching, you realize it hints at the denouement. But ‘inside Man’ is also a reference to the conflict between convenience and human morality, a Spikean flourish of a title. In one of the closing scenes, Jodie Foster’s queen bitch irrevocably links the Man with Osama bin Laden, and the look on his face is priceless. Like Rang De Basanti, Lee’s morality play damns those who subject ethics to expedience.
