Review

The words “hit film” are not commonly associated with director Spike Lee but that could change, given the example of his wildly entertaining new bank robbery film. Working as a hired gun here (this might be Lee’s only film as a director where he is not also credited as producer), the one-time indie wonder boy steps up to the plate in the mainstream Hollywood crowd pleaser game and does not disappoint — remarkable, considering the better part of his 20 year career.

Frequent collaborator and all-around good-guy-to-have-in-a-movie, Denzel Washington stars as a hostage negotiator Keith Frazier; he gets a chance to hit the big time and get Internal Affairs off of his back when he takes charge of police operations after a Manhattan bank is taken over by potential Mensa candidate Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) and his gang. Into the already tense mix arrives mysterious power broker Madeline White (Jodie Foster), who has an uncanny knowledge of everyone and everything related to every situation going on in the film.

What all of this adds up to is a really fun take on genre conventions, a bank heist that is no ordinary bank heist and a heist film that bends over backwards to not be an ordinary heist film. Lee, like many artists, can come off as arrogant (yes, I have met him and yes, he came off as arrogant) and has been so prone to beating people over the head with his own social and political agendas that his prodigious technical skills have taken a back seat to his public persona. This is not to say that he is bound and gagged here; racial profiling, black-on-black crime, and even a shameless plug for his wife’s novel all get screentime. The big difference between this film and so many of his other “joints” is the effective employment of subtler message delivery; we get the point without having it jammed into our eyeballs.

Here, Lee delivers one of the most New York-y films in recent memory. From the ghosts of 9/11 to a rich portrait of the melting pot of culture and cultures that is NYC, Lee serves up a dead-on look at what the is city today. The great performances from the leads should be no surprise: Washington is in fine form, loose and flustered; Foster, who has rarely been as elegant and icy as she is here, shines in a role that is deceptively underwritten; Owen is the picture of cool and both Willem Dafoe and Christopher Plummer get juicy supporting roles. However this is a film of bits and pieces that really succeeds on the strength of all of the particularly good talent in the smaller parts.

So, okay, some cinematic archaeologists might find a hole — quite literally — in the plot, but for once Lee is not out to change the world. Here, he is trying to entertain audiences, and satisfy himself with some passing references to larger, more realistic issues, but more importantly, he is desperately trying to prove, twenty years after She’s Gotta Have It, that, deep down inside, Spike still has it.

 -- David Greenberg