Inside Man: Most Wanted (2019)

Directed by: MJ Bassett | 101 minutes | action | Actors: Rhea Seehorn, Roxanne McKee, Tanya van Graan, Aml Ameen, Jessica Sutton, Akshay Kumar, Greg Kriek, Deon Lotz, Urs Rechn, Andre Jacobs, Sven Ruygrok, Joe Vaz, Paul du Toit, Jeremy Boado

In 2006, Spike Lee delivered an above-average crime thriller about a perfectly planned and executed bank robbery. In addition to Lee’s skillful direction, Inside Man benefited from a cast-iron cast, including Denzel Washington as negotiator Keith Frazier, Clive Owen as mastermind/bank robber Dalton Russell and Jodie Foster as fixer Madeleine White. The three turned out to be evenly matched on an intelligent level and that resulted in an unpredictable film that kept you on the edge of your seat. ‘Inside Man: Most Wanted’ is the official sequel to this movie. Thirteen years later, none of the original cast wanted a part (given the budget, they probably weren’t even asked), yet Inside Man: Most Wanted has more connections to the original than just the name.

‘Inside Man: Most Wanted’ begins with a flashback to World War II. A group of American soldiers discover a number of wooden boxes of unknown contents in a Nazi encampment. Flash forward to New York in the present day. A young woman confidently steps into the New York Federal Reserve. She turns out to be the leader of a group of bank robbers who routinely take the staff and customers hostage and make their demands known. FBI Agent Brynn Stewart (Rhea Seehorn) and Negotiator Remy Darbonne (Aml Ameen) have a job to do.

It won’t be long before the link to the Spike Lee movie is revealed. There’s a picture of Keith Frazier in the room where Brynn lectures on hostage situations to trainee officers and Dalton Russell makes his appearance after what was probably meant to be shocking revelation. Telling how the makers managed this – without the cooperation of Clive Owen – would be a spoiler, but Photoshop is one of the obvious tools used.

In itself, ‘Inside Man: Most Wanted’ isn’t even a bad movie, at most a mediocre copy of the original. If you haven’t seen the original, you probably find many of the ideas quite original and well thought out. It’s the Spike Lee movie comparison where things go wrong. None of the actors have the charisma of the cast of that time, but the background of the characters they have to play is also hardly worked out. At negotiator Remy, something of an attempt is made. The sympathetic New Orleans cop regularly quotes his church-going mother, but Brynn barely manages to read a few lines about women’s ambitions in a man’s stronghold. Not to mention Arielle Barash (Roxanne McKee). Her link to a character from ‘Inside Man’ is implausible and laughable, and belittles that character’s legacy.

Working in Hollywood often means spending a lot of time on things that don’t pay off. The original idea for a sequel to ‘Inside Man’ – already announced in 2006 – involved a reunion between Dalton Russell and Keith Frazier. Several people interfered with the screenplay. Initially, Russell Gewirtz (part 1 screenwriter) was supposed to write this. Later, Terry George took on the task. In 2011, Spike Lee confirmed that the plans had been canceled because the financial side of the picture was not getting right. That eight years later there is a sequel of this dubious level, will undoubtedly be rather sour for those involved. ‘Inside Man: Most Wanted’ especially makes curious what Lee had made of it with the original cast.