Contradicting Popular Opinion:
An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks
INTRO
What’s this? An actual CPO?
Inside Man
Inside Man is one of those especially frustrating bad movies because it takes a bit of time to figure out exactly what went wrong. It has attractive movie stars (most of whom can even act!), the dialogue isn’t terrible, and the film doesn’t require that much suspension of disbelief.
And yet, it sucks.
It sucks on toast.
It requires less analysis to look at something like The Covenant, and see why that film sucks. The Covenant features a hack directing non-actors playing cardboard characters in a script that is derivative six ways to Sunday.
But Inside Man has respectable folk attached, Oscar winners and such.
What went wrong?
Let’s take a couple of steps back, and see if we can figure out this thing. Inside Man tells the story of a hostage situation in a bank. Clive Owen calls the shots on the robbery, Denzel Washington is the detective working the case, Christopher Plummer owns the bank, and Jodie Foster plays the surreptitious fixer hired by Plummer, who just happens to know how to solve a problem like Maria. Rounding out the cast is Willem Dafoe as a by-the numbers police Sargent.
This is an example of “good cast, bad casting.”
I’m sure Clive Owen will eventually do something I like, but for now he doesn’t bring much to the table. His character isn’t particularly charming, nor despicable, nor threatening, nor terribly interesting. Clive Owen appears content to play this part like his plays most of his parts, i.e. sleepily.
Denzel seems far too polished for his role. His character is the everyman center of the film, who takes advantage of the fact that people underestimate him. You don’t underestimate Denzel Washington. He’s not an everyman. Watching him in this part is like watching Cary Grant play a Paul Douglas role.
Seeing Willem Dafoe in such a low key, unimportant role as his part in Inside Man is very distracting. The script affords him little room to do anything and the character is little more than an extra. Dafoe has done everything from Christ to the Green Goblin; you could at least give him a couple of decent lines.
Jodie Foster’s character seems like she was written as a two-faced whiz kid, as if she were Reese Witherspoon’s Election character adapted to the world of industrial espionage and political intrigue. What I’m trying to say here is that Foster is about 20 years too old to be playing the young upstart.
I’m just saying.
But I will say that casting The Sound of Music‘s Christopher Plummer as a Nazi abetter is a stroke of genius.
Casting, by itself, isn’t enough to ruin a movie. Frankly, most Hollywood movies are poorly cast (a topic for another CPO). So what is it that drags down Inside Man?
Well, it is a crime movie. There are a couple of ways in which crime movie work well. More specifically though, Inside Man is a heist movie, a smaller subcategory of the crime genre. Let’s focus on these things.
What are some of the ways that one can make an effective heist film?
Way1: We sympathize with the crooks. There are a couple of subsets as to how this method can work. Our crooks can be relatable or likeable or cool or justified in their actions or what have you. Dog Day Afternoon presents us with highly nuanced, troubled characters. Sexy Beast presents us with an over-the-hill gangster reluctantly forced into one last score. The Score gives us a youth versus experience rivalry story. Quick Change has our robbers be everyday folk looking to escape the mundane.
The nameless crooks of Inside Man, have no distinct personalities, nor discernable back story. So I guess the film-makers chose not to go this route.
Way 2: We sympathize with the cop, and he has something personal at stake!. The charming, anti-authority, authority figure matches wits with a nasty villain in order to save his girl/ his friend/ his family, or in order to avenge his partner’s death. If no cop is available, a hostage makes a fine substitute.
You know, the Die Hard school of heist films.
Inside Man doesn’t work from this perspective. Denzel doesn’t have much direct contact with the bad guys (one of this course’s prerequisites), nor does he personally have anything on the line. (His reputation and career are already in jeopardy from some previous unspecified venture.)
As for the hostages, well, none of them are particularly fleshed out. One of them is a kid, and a kid in jeopardy is usually a good way to cheat some emotion into the film. Of course, Inside Man squanders this opportunity by making the kid a fearless and loathsome smatchet.
The only character with anything at stake is Christopher Plummer’s, and we aren’t given any reason to care about him. By the end, he winds up as the villain, more or less.
Way 3: The Heist is the thing! There are some crime movies which focus on the heist itself. The heist becomes a magic trick, sleight of hand, a Rube Goldberg device of felonious proportions. The tension of the movie lies in A)whether or not the crime will work or B)the devilishly ingenious methods with which the crime did work. And will the whole thing end in a Reservoir Dogs blood bath?
Inside Man blows this thing too. We are shown post-crime interviews during the crime itself which mitigates any sense of tension. Plus, during the crime, we don’t really know anything about the criminals’ plans. We don’t really know what they are doing, nor are we given anything particularly intriguing that would make us want to figure out precisely what they are doing. We see the crooks do a couple of interesting things, but nothing so novel as to be memorable. We don’t unravel the mysteries alongside Denzel’s character, because Denzel’s character never really does figure things out.
As for the heist itself, here is how it allegedly works. (Saying “spoilers” here would be redundant, eh?)
Step 1: Clive Owen and his friends are somehow privy to the knowledge that there is no record of one specific safety deposit box in Baron Von Trapp’s charter bank.
Step 2: Clive Owen and his friends somehow know precisely what is in said box, despite the fact that no one else save Plummer’s character should know. Aside: So, Plummer decides to keep his Nazi stuff in a bank safety deposit box instead of his wall safe or what have you. Why does he also keep loose diamonds there? I understand that the ring is a traceable artifact, but bags of loose diamonds?
Step 3: Clive Owen and his friends go to the bank dressed like painters, take out the readily accessible cameras, hold everybody hostage with toy guns, and dress them all up like painters too.
Step 4: Clive Owen steals the undocumented diamonds, builds a fake wall to hide behind, digs a whole in which to poop, and releases his accomplices with the hostages.
Step 5: Clive Owen hides behind the fake wall for a week, hoping that in said time no bank employees enter the bank and notice that a room is five feet shorter than it was previously.
Step 6: Our criminals are off Scott-free, as nothing was officially stolen. The police weren’t interested in looking for thm because all they did was take hostages, and assault people, and point a 357 at a cop, and beat up a detective, and damage bank property to make a poop hole.
So it isn’t a terribly sophisticated plot. Lex Luthor won’t be stealing the idea any time soon. (Lex Luger, maybe.)
Perhaps you noticed that I was able to describe the entire heist without mentioning the character played by Jodie Foster? Well, let me tell you the significance of that character. Jodie Foster is sent in by Plummer to make sure his Nazi stuff is safe. She checks and it isn’t. Then she leaves.
Pretty important to the plot huh?
I mentioned the criminals beating up a detective, but other than that Denzel Washington’s character isn’t remarkably important to the heist either. Denzel plays the character with whom the audience is to relate. That is, to say, he stands outside the bank watching criminals meander about aimlessly. Like the audience, Denzel’s character is able to pass the time thinking about other things. (Although in a fierce bit of story telling, Denzel’s character thinks about his girlfriend, whereas I thought about sandwiches.)
About 6 scenes after it should have, the film finally does end, leaving the audience with deep questions to tackle. Questions such as, “I paid for this?” or “So, every character was really just a plot device, huh?”
But most importantly, “How does one solve a problem like Maria?”
Only a short time remains in:
The First Annual MLK day award for outstanding achievement in the field of excellence.
Coming soon is Martin Luther King day. King and I share initials. Therefore, MLK day also celebrates all that I do for this country.
You’re welcome.
And because I am so generous, I am going to run an unofficial contest here. This is a contest run by me personally, so even Inside Pulse members are eligible.
There is an actual physical prize involved, which I will mail to the winner. I don’t want to give too much away, but it resembles an Oscar
Here is the contest:
Pitch a movie to Contradicting Popular Opinion. It can be as long or as short as you like. The movie could be any genre, any budget.
I don’t want you to name a director or a cast. You can give types though. You can say something like, “this part is for a young Donald Sutherland.”
Also, aim it towards the Drive-in.
That’s all I have for rules. As always, email them to WBXylo@gmail.com.
Entries will be accepted until midnight of MLK day.
One Final Thing
If anybody listened to the Penn Jillette show on Wednesday January 10th, you no doubt hear Penn and Goudeau laugh at some jokes from a guy named ML.
What can I say? Jugglers love me.
