I really liked it. I loved the Indian music throughout. I loved Clive Owen's scary/rugged manliness. I loved their plan to rob the bank. It was very cool and my jaw dropped more than once.
Someone has to explain the ending to me though. Why did Denzel give her the recording back along with the number to the war crimes division? Was he basically telling her that she'd better turn Case in? Or not?
Anyway, it was well done and I was proud of Chiwetl Ejiofor (sp?) and his cute Brooklyn accent.
Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
Yes, that is what he was doing. Either turn in Case or he'd turn over that recording to the authorities.
If you ask me though, they didn't try very hard to catch the bad guys. Why didn't they take the bags of clothes and try to match them back up to the people in the bank? Even if the robbers had tried to claim someone else's clothing as their own, it would still have left them with 6 possible suspects, of which some could possibly be eliminated with the cameras that were working in the bank before they were zapped by the infrared flashlights.
posted
If they had taken the time in the movie to cover the perps vs available clothes a simple solution would have been to include clothes prepped ahead of time for the perps to claim.
Remember that there was a supposed two minutes between the time that the cams went off till the time the cop walking his beat called the crime in. Denzel's charater states that during that time there is no record of who enters or exits, leaving an subjective record of the occupants.
After that the implication was that with no suspects and nothing stolen there was no crime.
However there were crimes committed. The beating of the bank employee and holding of hostages. The viewer is supposed to overlook this and side with the criminals because they are getting back at the man, who in this case is a Nazi colaborator.
I suspect that the character was designed so that everyone would hate him and want him to be exposed. But the moral of this story is it's ok to steal from a thief. Something I don't particualarly agree with.
Looking at technical considerations, I enjoyed the cinematography. But the sountrack Spike used was just as unsynchopated as ever. IMO unsychopated doesnt make the movie edgy it just makes it annoying. The indian music wasn't the issue just some of the filler music like when swat was storming and clearing, and other places.
Posts: 686 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
I liked the Indian music in it. I don't remember any of the other music.
True, that would have been a simple solution for the clothing problem, but I saw no signs of them doing it, and to be honest, they should have at least covered it, because without it, it just strikes me as a giant plot hole.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I didn't understand Clive Owen's motivation. If he was just in it for the money, why didn't he take some cash along with the diamonds? And if it was a personal vendetta, I wish they'd have explained how he knew about the bank manager and his well-kept secrets.
Of course, there was a fatal flaw in that aspect of the story, too. The bank manager wasn't really working with the Nazis in WWII, he was only pretending to, and he could very easily prove that. If anyone had any questions, all he had to do was show them The Sound of Music.
Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
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posted
I agree. The movie needed to make a connection between the robbers and Case. Without that, a lot of it makes no sense. How did they know he worked with the Nazis? How did they know about the diamonds and the papers? These details would have been easy to work out, but they left them out. ALl it would have taken is to make the old Jewish robber have a connection to the Jewish family ring, for example. Had he said, "Why did you leave the ring, that was my great-grandmother's ring?" the whole thing might be resolved, because at least you leave the audience with a plausible connection.
Also, I don't understand why Denzel gave up on finding the robbers even after he realized he had bumped into Owen in the bank. He had been told to kill the case before and ignored those orders to satisfy his urge to solve the crime. Are we supposed to assume that once his personal curiousity had been satisfied he had no desire to bring his findings to the attention of law enforcement? Are we supposed to believe that an upstanding police officer who had just recently been wrongfully accused of stealing money from a crime would take a giant diamond from the bank robbery? It seems to violate the character we had been given.
I enjoyed the movie, I just thought the ending fell off a bit. There were mistakes.
posted
You're assuming that he was wrongfully accused You're assuming that he kept the diamond ring You're assuming that individual police officers don't use their own discretion inregard to whether to arrest a particular suspect or whether a particular crime is worth "solving for the books"
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I'm not assuming that police officers don't use discretion. I'm assuming that given the set of character traits we were shown, he would not have let the crime go. I never saw any evidence he gave the ring back, and given his actions, I think it is a safe assumption he was wrongfully accused.
posted
If the robber had taken any cash, he would have been inviting the police to track him down. Since he didn't take anything anyone knew about, he walked away scot-free.
I don't think Denzel dropped the case at all, I think he went and gave Jodi Foster the recording and the War Crimes card to let them know the jig was up, that they were busted. They're both going to jail.
And I seriously, seriously doubt he'd keep the diamond. Even if he wasn't the most ethical cop (which we have no reason to suspect, really), who on earth would give their fiancee a diamond that was stolen from Jews murdered in the holocaust? Um, no. He'd be no different from Case, then, really.
Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
There's a flaw in that line of reasoning though. If Denzel turns in the diamond, now the police know what was stolen, which would mean they have to investigate the case to find the diamonds from the box.
I guess part of the problem here is that you are supposed to like what the robbers are doing, and I don't. I want to see them go to jail for robbing the bank and taking people hostage, regardless of their other motives. I am never able to sympathize with the outlaws in any movie.
posted
Denzel could mail it to the closest heir of the person from whom that ring was stolen. An anonymous note claiming that the sender had found it while cleaning her deceased relative's estate might attract a day's worth of media attention should the recipient publicize the return. But that media attention doesn't mean that the police will connect the returned ring with the stolen ring. That's assuming that the recipient would publicize the "GoodSamaritan" return. A reminder within the note that taxes would probably be owed for the recipient's good fortune also might keep the ring's transfer private. Not arresting or identifying eg an illegal gaming operator after s/he helped bust a murderous drug kingpin wouldn't be surprising, so Denzel not going after the "minor crooks" who put a powerful politically-connected miscreant behind bars shouldn't be surprising.
Some of the hostages could have been part of the gang. That's the way I would plan such an elaborate scheme; going so far as to make my folks into bank customers or bank employees long before the actual "heist". So with eg nine "customers"/"employees" in on the "heist", there would be plenty of "real" hostages to coverup the discrepency in clothing. And having a bank employee in on the caper would explain how CliveOwens knew where to find the items he wanted. Similarly, to minimize the risk that real hostages would try something stupid, the telephone-concealing "hostage" "employee" could do it first, then get "beaten to a pulp" to put some fear into the real hostages. As professional"wrestling" proves, you can make a man look really really messed up without causing more than a minor amount of pain and very temporary cosmetic disfigurement. A little blood spreads a long way.
After all, the "heist" was an elaborate scheme designed to fool the police. Surely a team from eg the Mossad would have a planner who could out-think me.
quote: I didn't understand Clive Owen's motivation. If he was just in it for the money, why didn't he take some cash along with the diamonds?
If he'd taken the money, there would have been a visible crime. By taking the diamonds as well as the letter, he knew that the bank owner would keep it quiet. He was anticipating that the case would be buried. I believe that exposing the bank owner was done simply to placate his conscience and allow him to believe that he had balanced out his evil deed with a good one.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
The instant Case becomes aware that the letter has become public, he no longer has motive to keep silent about the diamonds. Perhaps the gang wasn't after personal wealth at all, but rather public airing of Case's past and restitution of the near-equivalent "convertible currency" taken from Holocaust victims by Case to those victims' heirs directly from Case's personal cache.
Cuz ya gotta admit that the safety deposit box was in many ways a shrine built by Case to torment himself with his past crime. Why else keep that ring and other evidence against himself along with diamonds similar to those he gained from his betrayal? Seems to me that Case, in a deep and possibly purely subconcious way, hoped that he would be caught and punished. And kept the possibility alive by maintaining the shrine of evidence. Otherwise he would have gotten rid of the evidence a long time ago.
Too bad they couldn't close the movie with CliveOwen getting into his nearby car after bumping into Denzel, starting the engine, then turning on his stereo to play his team song as he drives away from Denzel. Too bad InsideMan wasn't (secretly, leaving the audience unaware until the post-climactic closing vignettes) the first movie of that series.
quote:posted by prolixshore: The movie needed to make a connection between the robbers and Case. Without that, a lot of it makes no sense. How did they know he worked with the Nazis? How did they know about the diamonds and the papers? These details would have been easy to work out, but they left them out. ALl it would have taken is to make the old Jewish robber have a connection to the Jewish family ring, for example. Had he said, "Why did you leave the ring, that was my great-grandmother's ring?" the whole thing might be resolved, because at least you leave the audience with a plausible connection.
For me, the plausible connection they provided was sufficient. That the ring was the first thing the old Jewish man looked for and found missing implies a strong sentimental bond. Otherwise, why care about that particular ring and diamond when he has so many more present? I rather liked that they were subtle about the connection, rather than beating me over the head with it.
One thing bothered me. In the film, as far as I can recall, two "hostages" were beaten. The first was the manager with the Kanye ringtone. The second was the younger guy talking smack. I got the impression, later in the movie, that the younger guy was one of the robbers, thought it was hard to tell because of the similarity of clothing and low lighting inside the bank. Anyone else think the same thing?
Posts: 2907 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I thought the younger guy was one of the robbers as well. I also liked the subtlety of the connection. Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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