inside man

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inside Man is the story of Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) who matches wits with a clever bank robber Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) in a tense hostage drama. As the dangerous cat-and-mouse game unfolds, a wild card emerges: power broker Madeleine White (Jodie Foster), who reveals that this is no ordinary robbery, and that Russell is no ordinary bank robber. Rather, Russell's motive for the hostage taking is to reveal that Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), the founder of the bank where the hostage drama occurs, betrayed Jewish coworkers in unspecified ways to Nazis during World War II (60 years ago in the movie).

The hostage takers, led by Russell, enter the bank disguised as painters. They use infrared flashlights to knock out security cameras prior to taking out firearms, then take the customers and staff hostage and remove their keys and cell phones. Although they make numerous death threats to hostages, they display a hesitancy to kill hostages who refuse to cooperate, beating them instead. The hostages are forced to don the same clothes as the robbers; hooded coveralls with sunglasses and masks, to make it difficult to distinguish robber from hostage, a critical part of the robbers' plan.

The scene shifts to the office of Case, the founder of the bank. His assistant informs him of the hostage taking and the location and he is quietly, but deeply, alarmed.

Back at the bank, Russell requests food for the hostages. The police bug the pizza boxes. Russell anticipates this and plays a recorded speech by former Albanian President Enver Hoxha for them via a digital audio player, sending the police on a humorous wild goose chase to find an Albanian translator.

Case walks with White at the waterfront and asks White if she can arrange for the contents of his safety deposit box at the bank to remain secret. White assures him she can and Case hires her.

The hostage takers have demanded Frazier provide two buses and a jet. Case arrives at Frazier's Command Post and eagerly offers to arrange the jet, leaving Frazier speechless. Frazier has no intention to provide a plane and it is made clear to the audience that standard procedure is for the police negotiator to feign arranging for a plane as a stalling tactic ("Come on," Frazier says to Russell, "you saw Dog Day Afternoon, you know you're not going to get a plane.").

In Case's service, White meets with the mayor to gain permission to enter the crime scene, and manipulates Frazier to let her talk to Russell. When she calls Russell, and mentions the special interests she wants to protect, Russell, who had up to this point deliberately refused to make extended contact with anyone, agrees to talk to her.

White enters the bank wearing a NYPD jacket and talks to Russell, who reveals Case's secret. When White requests to access the safety deposit box that Case mentioned, Russell shows her (but not the audience) a document that the safety deposit box contained, which the audience is led to understand indicates that Arthur Case, the chairman of the board of directors and founder of the bank, had somehow received money from the Nazis during World War II for unspecified services that resulted in Jewish deaths. We learn Case earned enough to start the bank where the hostage taking has occurred. After assuring Russell that Case will make him a very wealthy man if he is able to escape the bank with this document, White leaves.

Despite Russell's demands, Frazier realizes this is not a typical hostage situation/bank robbery. As the police consistently stall for more time, Russell continues to extend the deadline. Frazier realizes that it's Russell that has been stalling the police, not vice versa. Attempting a bluff, Frazier tells Russell that his plane is ready but he needs to know that all the hostages are safe before he can let them leave. Russell allows him to enter the bank, and Frazier is taken on a tour of the building and checks all the hostages. Upon exiting the bank, Frazier suddenly attempts to aggressively overpower Russell, only to fail when another robber comes to Russell's aid. Intriguingly, Russell still lets Frazier leave unharmed with seemingly no repercussion for his attack. Frazier takes notice of this, but before long the robbers call and direct the police to point their cameras to a specific window on the second floor, where they show the execution of one of the hostages. An enraged Frazier confronts Russell again, demanding to know their true intentions. He tells them that they never really wanted a plane in the first place, and that "you've got everybody marching to your beat, including me, and I'm through buyin' it." Russell simply replies that Frazier is "too damn smart to be a cop" and closes the door on him.

The hostage execution prompts the ESU team into action, and they plan to raid the building. Since they cannot tell hostage from robber, they decide to use rubber bullets to simply knock everyone out.

Frazier later speaks to the cop who initially reported the robbery, asking him to tell the story about the time a twelve year-old stuck a gun at him. The cop tells the story using racist slang, which Frazier (who is African American) tells him to tone down. After the story, the cop apologizes, saying that he should "watch what he says, because you never know who's listening." It suddenly dawns on Frazier that the written message Russell had initially sent out (and brought to the police command center) could have been bugged. He rushes into the command center and finds the written message, rips it apart, and indeed finds a transmitter. He orders Captain John Darius (Willem Dafoe), in command of the police on the scene, to recall his men, but Darius ignores him.

Before the police can storm the bank, the robbers detonate a bomb at the front door of the bank and a horde of identically dressed robbers and hostages burst out of the bank. The police detain and interrogate everyone, but during the robbery, all the robbers (except Russell) had feigned to be hostages at one point, each of them making a scene so that the true hostages would incorrectly identify them as hostages. Thus, during Frazier's interrogations, he could not single out any robbers amongst them. However, as Frazier had met Russell personally, he knew that he was missing. Russell apparently did not leave the bank with the others, but a search of the building revealed nothing as well. The end result: a perfect crime; no money missing, no people killed or seriously injured (it was discovered that the hostage execution was faked) and no "robbers" found; even the weapons the robbers left behind were merely toy replicas—it was as if the incident never occurred. As such, Frazier's boss tells him to bury the case.

Frazier refuses, and looking through the bank's records, finds that a certain safety deposit box never appeared on any records since the bank's founding. He obtains a search warrant from a judge to open it. He is then confronted by White, who informs him of Case's dealings with the Nazis. She quotes Baron de Rothschild, "When there's blood on the streets, buy property." She also tries to convince Frazier to drop his investigation, reminding him that she has held up her end of her deal with him (guaranteeing he would be promoted, and returning money he was implicated in stealing prior to the events of the movie). He refuses again, and points out there was no deal that he agreed to. He then pulls out the James Bond style recording pen which an officer had showed him earlier, and plays the conversation which took place in the car. In the recorded conversation, White and the Mayor told Frazier that he has no choice but to assist them because of the cash missing in the previous case. Frazier said that he doesn't need help with that, because he is innocent. White then said it does not matter if he's innocent or not, he'll go down for it anyway.

White confronts Case about dealings with the Nazis, in which he confesses everything to her. He also reveals that the safe contained diamonds, including a Cartier ring, belonging to a Jewish friend whom he allowed to die at the hands of the Nazis in exchange for money. He is remorseful for what he did, and had thus led a life of philanthropy and humanitarianism to try to reconcile his guilt. He offers her a check for her services, and it appears that he expects her to condemn him for his actions. She says that she's currently helping the nephew of Osama bin Laden acquire a duplex in New York City, and so is hardly in a position to take a moral high ground. Case retorts that he doesn't believe her for she wouldn't have told him if it was true. As White walks away she smugly replies, "We've listed you as a reference" to an enraged Case.

It is then revealed that Russell hid himself behind a fake wall erected inside the supply room (literally, the "inside man"). At the beginning of the movie, Russell narrates from the space behind the fake wall, which at first appeared to be a prison cell. He emerges a week after the "robbery" was committed. As he does so, he deliberately bumps into Frazier, who does not recognize him, and they exchange brief apologetic words. Russell is picked up by his associates, and is presumably never caught. His associates ask him for the ring, and Russell reveals it is in safer hands - Frazier's.

Frazier opens the safety deposit box to find a single diamond ring, a pack of gum (which Russell had offered to him when they met during the bank robbery, as a sign for Frazier that he was already in the safe deposit box), and a message, "Follow the ring." He interprets this as Russell's desires for him to continue the case. He confronts Arthur Case, where he shows him the ring, and informs him of his desire to investigate it. Then he barges in on a lunch that White and the mayor are having, indicating that he had discovered the ring was linked to a wealthy Jew who had died in a concentration camp, making it very incriminating to Case. He offers White the pen with the recording, and gives her a card to have the war crimes reparations committee look into the situation. White notes that Frazier probably made copies, but it's clear she'll assist him. Frazier then leaves with the ring.

Frazier, in his brief encounter with Russell, had mentioned his girlfriend: specifically, that he wanted to propose to her but did not have the financial means of buying a ring. Russell replied that if he loves her, money should not matter. After his final encounter with White, Frazier goes home and finds a diamond in one of his pockets. He then realizes that it was dropped there by the man he bumped into in the bank, and that Russell was that man. Frazier chuckles, and as the film fades to black, we are left to presume Frazier will offer the diamond in a marriage proposal to his girlfriend.

The main storyline of the film is intercut with flashforwards of freed hostages and hostage takers being interrogated by the police.