Essay Plan

My independent study focuses on the generic codes and conventions of the thriller genre in the movie "Inside Man" (Spike Lee, 2006). Inside Man is a crime thriller, a hybrid of rime and thriller genres. Because of this hybrid genre, there is less emphasis on the psychological effects of conventional thrillers. Inside Man follows the interactions between Washington and Owen's characters, as Washington tries to negoiation the release of the hostages and capture the robbers while Owen is always somehow one step ahead of the police.

Narrative
Owen has a monologue in the beginning of the film stating he can pull of the perfect robbery. This sets the premise for the entire film for if he can actually do it.
In the opening driving seqeunce, the robbers faces are not revealed to the audience and you only see them at the end of the film when they pick up Owen's character. Along with the driving sequence an indian music soundtrack which misleads the audience, this adds some cultural depth to the film along with Spike Lee being a New York resident and so he brings his own local knowledge to the direction of the film.

There are many flash-forwards to interviews with the hostages as though they are the thieves(you only find out why they are at the end of the film). Another flash-forward is seen when the police try to plan a raid on the bank and go through several scenarios, each ending badly as they cannot discern criminial from hostage.

Police
Portrayed at first as being lazy (going to the cafe after reaching the hostage scene). They make a taxi cab joke with a singh that had been arrested by officers which casued his turban to come undone (in reference to New York cabbies being Indian). They stare at a woman's chest during an interrogation saying that she and another woman match the measurements of one the robbers (coincidentally it is her) but she gets away. The scene is cuts from the two officers to her and back which gets the scene a more humour edge.

Characters
The criminals are not portrayed as conventional ones, they instigate a hostage situation but only imitate killing hostages and only make the hostages think they are brutalising someone so that they obey them. It also become apparent that the weapons the robbers have are fake, revealing they robbed a bank with toy guns and used fake blood to intimidate hostages.
In comparison a film such as 44 Minutes has the robber engaging in a huge shootout with the police to escape them. The robbers in Inside Man use techniques such as bugging items (which the police did also), but the robbers were expecting it and laid out a red herring for them while the robbers were hearing everything the police were saying which gave them enough time to escape and for Owen's character to hide.

Race
- Jewish: the bank robberies were revealed to all be Jewish, including the Rabbi that was pushed to the ground in the beginning. They had gotten through the police interrogation (not including Owen as he was hiding til a week after the robbery). It is revealed that the owned of the bank, gave up a French Jew to the Nazis in exchange for a large sum of money which he used to open a bank which was then subsequently targetted by the robbers due to his connection with the Nazis (it could be inferred that the robbers have some connection to the family however it is not confirmed).

Fourth Wall: the imaginary invisible wall through which an audience views film, television and stage drama productions. Clive Owen breaks this wall in the beginning of the film, giving him an omniscent persona.


Protagonist: the leading character or hero in a film with whom the audience can identify and from whose point of view the action is positioned, often set in binary opposition against the antagonist. Denzel Washington plays the protagonist, Clive Owen is displayed as the antagonist but this status is dispelled toward the ending on the movie.

Hybrid: A cross betweenone film genre and another. Inside Man is a mixture of crime and thriller.

Equilibrium: the harmonious state that often exists at the start of a narrative before disruptive or transforming elements are introduced. The equilibrium is when the bank is moving along fine and people are going about their business in the bank.

Disequilibrium: the disruption of narrative by persons or events presenting a challenege to the harmonious equilibrium often found at the beginning of a film or other media text. The disequilibrium is created when the bank robbers enter the bank, the disruption itself it highlighted when the security guad notices something is odd and goes to stop the robbers but is held up at gunpoint.

Institution: any of the organisations responsible for the production, marketing, distribution or regulation of media texts.

Analysis of Inside Man introduction

Inside Man trailer

SHEP analysis of Inside Man

Social: The sensitive issue of Jewish people and the war has been addressed in this film in that people of the later generations want revenge for the crimes committed in the war. The robbers are,in a sense, portrayed as saviours/heroes as they are punishing people who had profited from the war. However, it is their ends that justify their means as robbing a bank isn't a normal (or the best) way to do it.

Historic: Bank robberies have happened frequently throughout American history[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_bank_robbers_and_robberies]. However, Inside Man put a twist on it by making the motive a fulfilment of an ideal rather than for monetary gain. Also, usually bank robbers are portrayed as desperate men with big guns. These robbers are very smart, they even outsmart the police who have superior resources.

Economic: The large divide between rich and poor in America and the pursuit of "The American Dream" may convince people into thinking that they have to rob a bank to become rich. However, Inside Man twists this ideal in that not only money is kept in a bank, people hide things that they don't want anyone else to see.

Political: American politics are usually biased toward making the richer citizens richer by giving them tax breaks etc. Inside Man could be trying to say that them and their money is not as safe as they think it is and that they should not be so greedy.

Rotten Tomato review of Inside Man

What's going down inside Manhattan Trust's Wall Street branch may or may not be the usual bank robbery, but "Inside Man," the crime drama that details those nefarious doings, is careful to keep its distance from your standard heist movie.

Smartly plotted by newcomer Russell Gewirtz and smoothly directed by, of all people, Spike Lee, "Inside Man" is a deft and satisfying entertainment, an elegant, expertly acted puzzler that is just off-base and out-of-the-ordinary enough to keep us consistently involved.

he broad outline of "Inside Man," of course, couldn't be more familiar. We're talking perfect-crime territory here, the classic cat-and-mouse encounter between criminal mastermind Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) and Det. Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington), the NYPD operative charged with outthinking the man with the master plan. Screenwriter Gewirtz, though, is not interested in doing anything quite that formulaic. Though its eye is always on the final showdown, his script is especially good at doling out confounding information on a need-to-know basis, providing a multitude of incidents to occupy our minds until all the pieces fall into place. This is one of the rare films Lee has directed without at minimum co-writing the script, and you can see why. Though he has made his own versions of standard Hollywood films before — witness the classic biopic "Malcolm X," also starring Washington — it's obvious that Lee is more at home with argumentative, provocative, socially relevant films than he is with this kind of genre material. Which turns out to be a good thing.

For though he is perfectly capable of crisply handling nuts-and-bolts action scenes like that of the quartet of robbers securing the bank and taking dozens of hostages, that is never going to be enough to hold Lee's interest.

So the director found ways to be slightly off the mark, from the minor — starting the film with the unmistakable and beautifully disorienting rhythms of Bollywood superstar composer A.R. Rahman — to the major, including the decision to use both Washington and costar Jodie Foster in roles that depart a bit from what they usually do. And what else could the shot of Brooklyn's legendary Cyclone roller coaster under the opening credits be telling us except that this is going to be quite the wild ride? Lee has also been able to make political points around the film's edges, to be himself without sacrificing the project's plausibility in the process. A Sikh hostage complains of police mistreatment and being called "an Arab." Two police officers have a racially charged conversation. A boy is chided for playing a particularly brutal and insensitive video game. Not to mention that one of "Inside Man's" themes, the notion of systemic political corruption, doubtless found a receptive audience with the filmmaker.

Finally, like any nongenre director, Lee is interested in people, in what they look like and how they act. It's an interest that exists outside of considerations of suspense, but when characters are made individual, it inevitably means that we worry more about them, which of course heightens tension.

One person who is cast exactly to type with excellent results is the redoubtable Owen, who opens the film by looking directly at the camera and saying, as only he can, "My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say. I choose my words carefully, and I never repeat myself." What Russell, no paragon of modesty, proceeds to tell us is that he's planned the perfect bank robbery. The film immediately shows him and his team, all dressed identically in painters' coveralls, swiftly taking over the bank in question and telling cowed hostages, "My friends and I are making a very large withdrawal. Anyone who gets in the way gets a bullet in the brain."

Charged with negotiating with the man is Washington's Det. Frazier and his partner, Bill Mitchell (the always convincing Chiwetel Ejiofor). Frazier, however, is not the superstar cop you might be expecting. He is a veteran detective second grade with the slightest hint of a paunch who got the assignment only because the department's top guy was on vacation.

At first the situation develops like any other bank robbery, with Russell eventually demanding the usual fully fueled jet ready to take him and his team out of town. But first the audience and then Frazier begin to sense through the actions of others that there are as yet unnamed factors in play.

The first hint of this comes when Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), Manhattan Trust's board chairman, is informed of the robbery and says, "Oh, dear God." He next calls Madeline White (a picture-stealing performance by Foster), who is the ultimate ice-princess power broker in a city of power brokers, and asks for her services.

From that point on, "Inside Man's" plot takes more twists and turns than the venerable Cyclone and includes the interesting technique of periodically flashing forward to police interrogations of the hostages after the siege is over. Like everything else about this engrossing thriller, it's a tactic intended to keep the audience on its toes, and it does.

"Inside Man"

Los Angeles Times review
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/turan/cl-et-inside24mar24,0,3832143.story

Media Institutions

The film was produced by Universal Studios, Imagine Entertainment, 40 Arces & A Mule Filmworks and GH Two. It was directed by Spike Lee.
Spike Lee's films usually have some racial or other ideological theme to them. In Inside Man, the robbers objective is to uncover a war criminal, the robbers themselves are Jewish, which gives them a motive to rob the bank despite the negative repercussions to the public and themselves.