After years of doughy drama and feeble takings, Spike Lee has bowed to the inevitable. He has put away his soapbox, taken the Hollywood shilling, and made a frothy heist movie that hasn’t got a single worthy thought in its head. Inside Man is a slick and glossy thriller about a Wall Street robbery that keeps us second-guessing from the moment the opening credits start rolling.

Clive Owen is the inscrutable master of ceremonies. He storms the Manhattan Trust bank with a van full of painters and decorators, alerts the police, and locks all the exits. “Why?” he asks the camera. “Now there’s the rub.”

The 50 hostages trapped inside are forced to strip and don boiler suits. Curiously, Lee’s cleavage shots are far tighter than the security. The extras are duly stuffed into the basement while Owen sits on a bale of cash waiting for Detective Denzel Washington to pitch up.

Washington is not your usual downbeat Columbo. We know this because a steamy nymph spends the film lying on his bed in pink underwear with a phone to her ear saying: “C’mon, honey, the handcuffs are getting cold.” She has the patience of a saint.

But Washington has a director to save. He must turn Lee’s preposterous drama into a crisis, insult his colleagues, infuriate his superiors and go mano a mano with the unflappable Owen.

This is no ordinary stake-out. The media circus outside the bank has an inexplicable habit of vanishing and reappearing at will. The thieves seem weirdly unimpressed by money, and in no hurry to catch their getaway plane.

Their main target — and I’m giving away nothing vital — is a small safety deposit box with a large brown envelope in it. Jodie Foster’s performance as a ruthless powerbroker, hired to recover this envelope at any cost, is frankly more alarming than the secret therein. The strings she pulls are too silly for words. She totters through the National Guard and into the bank on 6in heels as if she was going for a weekly facial.

Every inch of his film defies credibility, but Lee is gifted with a camera. His use of filters and film stock is terrific, as are the swooping overhead shots he uses to frame his set- pieces. But if he thinks Inside Man is the golden goose that will fund his next six sociopolitical masterpieces he ought to think again.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

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