Spike Leeâs big-budget heist-cum-hostage thriller starts with the Bollywood hit âChaiyya Chaiyyaâ ricocheting through the theater as the camera shimmies up the façade of an imposing bank and jumps between its various eagles and sirens and hooded figures. The credits are slick and the editing is snappy, and you know at once you arenât watching a Spike Lee âjoint,â exactly. (There are distinctive Leesian flourishes, but this is a studio picture though and through.)
Denzel Washington plays Keith Frazier, a New York Police detective, and when a bank holdup turns into a complex hostage situation, heâs called to put his silk ânâ granite conversation skills to the test. It takes several minutes, to put it charitably, for him to catch the slightest glimmer of whatâs going on (or maybe the grainy flash-forward interrogation scenes have let the hostage-takersâ Symbionese Liberation Army methods slip a little too early), but once the initial exchanges are madeâbetween Frazier and the lead hostage-taker, between nebulous powerbroker Madeleine White (a femmed-up Jodie Foster) and her various clients, including a filthy rich Christopher Plummerâthe movie is tense and slack in gloriously anxious intervals.
The film is a long 129 minutes, but thatâs fine by me. Not only does it allow Spike Lee (working from a silly/smart script by Russell Gewirtz) to take lightweight detours into racial profiling, violent video games, and the exceedingly unfortunate names lovers give to each otherâs genitalia, but it gives you plenty of time to hypothesize about the hostage-takersâ motives. (Is that anti-capitalist speech in Albanian a clue?) The plot has spongy spots, like the amorphous Aryan evil that both the good and bad guys ultimately have to contend with, but itâs never less than fun.