Clive Owen is a smart bank robber. He disguises his hostages by dressing them in the same attire as his posse of thieves. This confuses the police, led by Denzel Washington, on who’s a target, and who isn’t. Spike Lee directs an unusually mainstream studio film but with his typical stereotypical history – the hostages are a dark-skinned man in turban mistaken for an Arab, a young ghetto boy seeking violence, an annoying woman too loud on her cell phone – and the clichés continue. Yet the story holds our interest mainly because of its seemingly intriguing plot. Jodie Foster is the mayor’s right hand girl who can connive her way into anything, including a held-up bank, and Christopher Plummer is the dignified man on the stationary of the bank’s board of directors. Yet for all its great actors, the cast comes off as very one dimensional. Denzel is the only defined character, in a story that will make you wonder two things in the end: Why was such damaging contents of that safety deposit box in the bank in the first place? And why (we are never fully explained) does Owens want it? With this Oscar worthy cast, you’ll get your money’s worth, because while it never adds up, there is at the very least, some form of emotional pay-off.
