Inside Man

When I saw the trailer for Inside Man, I immediately thought it looked like a cool movie. Pretty much anything Denzel Washington is in I have loved, and Jodie Foster and Clive Owen are great actors as well. Then, I heard that Willem Dafoe, whom I enjoy, was in it, as well as the magnificent Christopher Plummer and Chiwetel Ejiofor, a relative newcomer who was fabulous in one of my favorite movies of last year, Serenity. The only red flag I saw was that Spike Lee was the director, but I figured he's a great director in spite of having sometimes directed films I had no interest in. But with a cast like that, I had high hopes.

And I definitely was not disappointed. Hands-down this is the best movie I have seen this year. Any fear of it being a tired bank robbery plot is quickly dispelled, and the entire storyline is fascinating and admirably believable. The use of flash-forwards to assist in the plot development is well-done, and there are some perfectly brilliant moments throughout. The cast is superb, with only Dafoe's character being somewhat uninteresting (though more due to his function than to his acting, which was fine). I highly recommend this movie, and it is likely it will be one of the few movies of the year that I will actually go back to see a second time in the theater.