In Spike Lee’s film Inside Man, Detective Keith Frazier matches wits against Dalton Russell, a mastermind who holds numerous people hostage in order for his gang to rob a bank. Shortly after Dalton’s gang takes control of the bank, Detective Frazier arrives to negotiate with Russell. Madeline White, a power broker the bank’s owner, Arthur Case, hires to retrieve and destroy his secret safe deposit box, appears to demand a meeting with Dalton. Russell reveals that Case foundered the bank with jewels he received for telling Nazis where Jews were hiding during World War II. In the meantime, Frazier realizes that Dalton is stalling for an unknown reason, and the mastermind allows him inside to see that the hostages are safe. However, Frazier …show more content…
The story not only shifts between focussing on the events happening to Russell’s gang and Frazier’s police forces, but also between several other inconsequential characters and to multiple points in time to shape the narrative’s world and grab the audience’s interests. As written by film critic Roger Ebert, “Lee finds so many interesting details that don’t involve the plot that we’re reluctant when he gets back to business”. Through Lee’s expert filmmaking abilities, he adds interesting content to sections of the narrative that most other directors would not think of expanding upon. While in doing so, the focus is taken away from the major events, but this creates a sense of realism for the movie’s world by showing that events happen outside of the main characters’ actions, which lesser films would not do. The A.V. Club’s Scott Tobias notices how this different tactic can be jarring, yet he states, “Washington’s [Frazier’s] curiosity over Owen’s [Dalton’s] methods soon become so fascinating that it hardly matters when the threat of danger and the promise of action dissipate almost immediately”. Tobias realizes that just because Lee takes a different approach to presenting the story to the viewer, these actions do not denote a poorly made narrative. In fact, the creative style of the narrative’s portrayal, in tandem with the already interesting story, outweighs any negative impacts resulting from the shifting plot sequences. The narrative’s interesting flow builds the audience’s suspense and intrigue through its focus shifting from various captivating events, despite any of the deviations from the main story at several