Word: cops
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...answer is, very. The business of the film is to explain why this amiable hunk is being circled by spooky Mr. Goodkat (a tight-lipped Bruce Willis), a wise-guy cop (Stanley Tucci) and two crime lords (Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman). To call the film's plot labyrinthine is to understate the case. To say it works out with complete plausibility is to overstate it. Still, the story never runs completely off the rails and is, in any event, just a pretext for a lot of very sharp badinage by Jason Smilovic--a screenwriter who would have been...
This is the fourth movie in the past month that is set in New York City and involves some sort of criminal activity, and all are smart and entertaining: 16 Blocks, also starring Willis, as an alcoholic cop trying to get a witness to safety; Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty, in which Vin Diesel's mobster acts as his own defense lawyer; and Spike Lee's skillfully orchestrated story of a bank heist, Inside Man. None of them require the audience to embrace heavy-duty fantasy or comic-romantic fatuity. They have grit, wit and style, plus a semblance...
...meantime, however, there has been a wave of TV cop shows, in the CSI and Law & Order molds, that may have reached viewers' saturation point. And in the past few years, broadcast and basic-cable networks have gradually introduced flawed, even criminal protagonists to all kinds of shows: the antiheroes of FX's The Shield, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me; the cruelly sarcastic doctor on House; and the castaways of Lost, who include a heroin addict, a torturer and several killers. (Fox's Prison Break is also set among criminals, although it's about a wrongfully imprisoned man and the brother...
...this material sounds politically fraught, cop shows have always been: whether you focus on crime's punishment or its causes is to some people a key dividing line between conservative and liberal. But the toughest antihero for middle America to warm to may be the lead actor of Showtime's forthcoming Dexter, a serial killer who has channeled his impulses by becoming a forensics expert who solves crimes, then offs the criminals. "If you're compelled to kill," jokes Hall, "it may as well be people who deserve...
While "Inside Man" treads familiar ground, it does so with a deft, fun touch that makes it feel fresher than the average cops-and-robbers soirée. Perhaps its trickiest feat is balancing two distinct storylines: a cop movie (the police are the good guys and the drama is behind the barricades) and a heist movie (the robbers are the good guys and the fun is in seeing them pull off their convoluted plot). It is hard to cheer for both sides at once, but the movie makes it possible (no telling who wins in the end, though...