Video reviews: Cop drama grabs, holds audience

Mike Pearson, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 11, 2006 at midnight

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Inside Man

Universal. DVD. 129 min. Rated R. $29.98.

Grade: B+

For a Spike Lee joint, Inside Man is strangely free of soapbox theatrics. It boasts a moral agenda, to be sure, but mostly it excels at basic cops-and-robbers drama.

When masked bandits swarm into a midtown Manhattan bank and take customers and employees hostage, Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) is dispatched as a negotiator. Almost immediately he senses something wrong. Why is the lead crook (Clive Owens) stalling for time? Who is the well-heeled woman (Jodie Foster) who descends on the crime scene with the mayor in tow? She's got enough pull to get inside the bank.

Most troubling of all, why do the bandits seem to anticipate every move the cops will make?

Frazier's frustration rises as the standoff drags on. Lee's film unfolds from several vantage points: inside the police command post, inside the bank, and inside the posh office of the bank's pompous chairman (Christopher Plummer). Frazier is sure he has something to hide.

Inside Man isn't just about planning a perfect crime; it is also about the politics of apprehension. Even as Frazier tries to figure things out, he feels the heat from above. One false move and the case will be taken from him.

Washington does his usually competent job of channeling barely-suppressed rage. He's a cop with personal problems (his girl wants to get married), and a hunger to make it to Detective First Grade. He's more than matched by Owens' smart thief. His voice never betrays what he's thinking, much to the cops' chagrin.

Not everything about the plot makes sense (the ending is a bit odd), and Foster gets some quality screen time, yet her character leaves us cold.

No matter. In the end, Inside Man delivers a plot that keeps us guessing the whole time.

Brick

Universal. DVD. 110 min. Rated R.

Grade: B

This darling of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival is everything you'd want a 1940s film noir to be: Stylish, somber and deliberately complicated.

The rub? It's set in a 21st century high school where moody loner Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) agrees to help an ex-girlfriend in trouble. When she dies before he learns what she's involved with, he goes looking for answers, much to the anger of the local crime boss (Lukas Haas). The Pin can't have this guy beating up his best customers.

Soon enough Brendan wheedles his way into the organization, always looking for clues to Emily's death. He finds a world of teen-age gangsters as unstable as nitroglycerin. The muscle is a beast. The boss is a mama's boy. And the girls have the femme fatale moves of women twice their age.

Brick is violent, disturbing and oddly compelling, painting as it does a portrait of adolescent alienation, addiction and apathy. The adults here are totally clueless, including a principal (Richard Roundtree) who tries to press Brendan for answers to vague questions.

Director Rian Johnson admits a love for Dashiell Hammett and he tries to re-create the hard-boiled mood of Hammett's mysteries. The air is ripe with paranoia and the bonds these characters form seem as fragile as strands of hair. That suggests a flaw in Johnson's script; we never quite understand what happened between Brendan and Emily.

On the plus side, Gordon-Levitt gives a powerful performance, at once energetic and minimalist. There's a little bit of Brendan inside us all - a scrappy pit bull.

DVD extras include several deleted scenes and interesting commentary on their excision by Johnson. This is not quite the version that screened at Sundance.

If you want tidy, skip Brick. It's filled with shady dudes and even shadier dames. Just like in the old days.

Scary Movie 4

Dimension. DVD. 91 min. Unrated. $29.95.In stores Aug. 15.

Grade: C

When last we encountered the makers of the Scary Movie franchise, they were spoofing all that's sacred in teen-oriented horror flicks, including The Ring. Now there's Scary Movie 4, in which the spoofing continues with pot shots at The Grudge and War of the Worlds.

Toss in riffs on Million Dollar Baby, The Village and Saw and you'll get an idea of the cross-pollinated story. Tom Ryan struggles to get his kids away from alien invaders, even as pretty Cindy Campbell struggles to learn why her house is haunted. The old lady in her care (Cloris Leachman) isn't half as scary as the ghost of a little boy that keeps falling down stairs.

And so it goes, as the dense U.S. president (Leslie Nielsen) labors to calm a panicked world. But does he have to do it in the nude?

Sadly, the Scary Movie series gets weaker with each outing. There are maybe five giggles, a handful of chuckles and two belly laughs in this entire movie. Amusing (there's a lengthy Brokeback Mountain joke) isn't the same as funny.

The actors are game, and give props to the special effects. Still, this comedy never builds up a head of steam. Given a choice, it settles for stupid over sublime every time.

Mike Pearson is features editor. pearsonm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2592

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