lick and happily mainstream, "Inside Man" is the least Spike Lee-ish Spike Lee film to date, and yet his best work since Do the Right Thing. Still, it retains enough of the New York City attitude that made non-Lee films - Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) - so memorable. The mainstream-ism of this pressure-cooker could be due to the fact that Lee joined forces with Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind) for this project.

It’s been done before – four people take over a Manhattan bank disguised as painters, corral 50 hostages, open the vaults, and then wait - but, this twist of the genre has its key actors play tough New Yorkers, who must outwit each other in order to protect competing interests, teasing the audience with tricks of plot, right up to the very end.

The film is framed by Dalton Russell's voice-over narration, which starts and ends the story. Specialist New York Detectives Frazier (Denzel Washington, in his fourth Lee film to date) Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) get the job of working with Emergency Services chief Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe), negotiating with bank robber Russell (Clive Owen) who has invaded the bank. Just as things get serious, along comes Madeline (Jodie Foster), a power broker in pointed Chita Rivera stilettos, who was hired by the bank's CEO Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer) to intercede; he is more concerned about certain items in the safety deposit vault than in the lives of the hostages.

At that point, it becomes increasingly clear to Frazier that this is no ordinary robbery with no ordinary motive. Mastermind Russell has a plan, and nothing is going to deter him from getting what he’s come to do. These guys aren’t in it for the money. They want something else. Russell and company dress their hostages in matching jumpsuits and disguises, confusing law enforcement agents who watch on hidden cameras and can’t distinguish the robbers from the hostages.