Here and There

Wow.

There are very few books or movies I haven’t been able to muster the strength or perseverance to make it through. Atlas Shrugged and the film-version of Breakfast of Champions come to mind.

I tried to watch Spike Lee’s Inside Man the other night, and I should’ve known something was seriously wrong when the opening shot had the unmistakably British Clive Owen monologing deadpan into the camera … speaking with an American accent. Yuck. It was only slightly less terrible than someone like Winona Ryder or Natalie Portman speaking British-English. No. You’re not allowed to do that. That means you, too, Gwenyth.

Then the movie really started, and started to piss me off. Right away, a scene in the lobby of the bank, with strangers talking to strangers as if they’ve known one another their entire lives. What about Denzel Washington’s character, whose first scene has him more or less tail-between-the-legs, his “lady” on the line bitching about something or other? Then, when he’s out on the job, his recently bold sidekick instantly becomes an earpiece for Inspector Denzel’s witty, Academy-worthy one-liners.

Or recently-held hostages speaking to their captors with a gravitas never before seen in cinematography (much less real life). Or how about this lethal dosage of cringe: the scene in which the crime-unit cops play a signal they’ve intercepted on a loud speaker, because, of course, “someone out on the street (in Lee’s beloved NYC) probably knows whatever language they’re speaking.” I paraphrase, but I don’t digress.

I turned the movie off shortly after that scene.

If Spike Lee wants to keep telling small “joints” with big implications, or big ones full of minor life detail, he should abandon all pretense of making his films “realistic.” People don’t behave the way Lee has them behave.

This movie could have gotten better had I stuck with it, but that’s not likely. Even if it did, the rest of the movie would’ve had to contend with 20 minutes of some of the worst moviemaking I’ve ever seen.

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