Inside Man

- - - -

So you and your team go into a bank and you take a bunch of hostages. Pretty soon the police have surrounded the building. You knew this was going to happen, right? So what's your exit strategy?

"These guys know what happened in Munich, right?" the policemen ask. "Haven't these guys seen Dog Day Afternoon?"

The question they should really be asking is, "Have these guys seen Die Hard?" But maybe that would hit a little too close to home.

Inside Man isn't Die Hard, but I think it is a more worthy successor to Die Hard than either of the official sequels. (Die Hard 2 was too unimaginative, and Die Hard With a Vengeance was too gimmicky.)

Clive Owen takes the Alan Rickman part of the well-spoken criminal who's thought his robbery through and through. Denzel Washington is the black sheep detective. And Jodie Foster, loosely speaking, plays the role that the FBI played in Die Hard: a higher power that takes over from the cops... just as the criminals anticipated.

I enjoyed it.

Richard Mason