Inside Man movie explained

DALTON RUSSELL: THE ROBBER

There is always a temptation to romanticize charismatic, self-assured characters who know more than anyone else, including the audience, who is always one step behind, and even the tone of the voice matters. From the story’s start, a man who calls himself Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) provokes the viewer to be attentive to his words since he never repeats them. He sets a high bar of expectations, claiming to be the mastermind behind a perfect bank robbery, though Russell’s freedom is limited to a tiny cell at the story’s onset. One would argue that the opening introductory sequence was unessential, but it is untrue. Those sixty seconds introduced one of the most unorthodox bank robbers in cinematic history: a man of great calm, patience, and chessmaster’s mind but also arrogance, boosted ego, and readiness to sacrifice the comfort of other people for the sake of his goals. In pursuit of trying to get Inside Man explained, Dalton Russell comes more as an antihero than a villain, not to say that many of us wish him success. Life often favors audacious individuals, and movies can make you sympathize with them, even when their moral image is shady. 

Dalton Russell always seems to be ahead of both the police and people like Arthur Case and Madeline White, who regard him only as an obstacle on their way. He prepared the assault on Case Manhattan Bank with surgical precision in advance, from the moment of intrusion to leaving the building a week later. While experienced police officers thought to listen to the robbers, Russell ridiculed them with the voice tapes of the deceased Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. In parallel with this, he sent bugs to the police mobile headquarters and listed all their plans. He asked for a plane and a safe escape corridor, but Russell never intended to leave the bank in such a way, expending time. On a more practical tactical level, his team needed time to reshape the store room and to get into a targeted deposit box. On a more complex level, the robbers took their time to blend with the hostages to make Steve, Stevie, and Steve-O indistinguishable from the others, and then the moment came. Dalton Russell shaped the chessboard on the highest level of chess mating and looked for his opponents’ moves: Detective Frazier, Arthur Case, and Madeleine White. The efforts of the latter two to conceal the old stinky truth probably entertained the man, who controlled the whole process. 

Throughout the story, we reveal almost no information regarding Russell’s background, except for some virtues of his character and motives. It resembles just how few questions he answered in the opening 60-second monologue. Toward the end of the story, we understand the nature of the chamber, which looked like a prison cell: it was Russell’s choice to spend a week there with a poor toilet and means to entertain himself. Compared to such hostage takers as Sonny Wortzik from ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975) and John Q, he is extremely patient regarding time and his timing, since all events are a part of the plan. Russell is also an arrogant man who enjoys his superiority over other people, and the imperious manner of his speech sets the tone. He finds delight in telling his opponents at the end of the story that he will leave the bank through the main entrance as a free man. At the same time, his arrogance did not make him do stupid things or let his emotions dominate. He badly manhandles Peter Hammond but does not kill him. He points his gun at Detective Fraizer after the latter attempts to tear Russell’s mask, but he never harms him in response. 

Getting back to the idea that Dalton Russell is more like an antihero than a villain, it is not something new for hostage-taking or bank robbery movies, where most of the stories tend to make us sympathize with both sides. What is true is that Russell is not a Robin Hood who wants to take money from a billionaire for the sake of poor people or sick children. He ends his story with a feast of diamonds in his pocket, and the consequences of his action on the people involved are hard to predict. He did not take money from the vault, and no one died, but dozens of people experienced probably the worst days in their lives, resulting in posttraumatic stress disorder or even physical consequences like the increased possibility of heart failure or a tumor in Peter Hammond’s head. On the other hand, Dalton Russell never harmed hostages for pleasure or dominance, but only according to grand planning. Peter Hammond obeyed the rules and was punished to make the others do what they were told. Russell manhandled a man, but several scenes later, he was concerned with the level of violence in a video game and openly told a kid that everything would be alright. He spent months planning what he thought was a perfect bank robbery, but he neglected other people’s safety for his own goals, even if they were partially righteous regarding the unmasking of Arthur Case. 

KEITH FRAZIER: THE DETECTIVE

Despite his obvious role in the story as the counterpart to bank robbers, Police Detective Keith Frazier is not a saint and should be treated with a pinch of salt. Being a victim of the false accusations (they proved to be such only toward the end of the story), Frazier takes a chance to negotiate the bank robbery as his last means to make a name and become a Detective First Grade. He does not want any of the hostages to be hurt during the process, but the case serves more his ambitions than the city. Similar to his opponent Dalton Russell, the detective takes delight in being at the center of the events, and in wider means he is greedy for fame and recognition, and should not be treated as a positive character in its established Disney-like meaning. He has a younger fiancée who pushes Frazier for promotion to move to another apartment, and he is fed up to the teeth with the inklings regarding the so-called ‘Madrugada money’ and his supposed involvement in the dirty business and corruption. 

Speaking about the similarities and differences between Dalton Russell and Keith Frazier, the Inside Man movie explained their characters as dark and darker. Russell admits his opponent’s abilities and unorthodox mind soon into the story, as well as Frazier understands that the robbery has different layers and should not be treated at face value. Similar to the famous ‘Negotiator’ movie with Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey, about two negotiators on opposite sides of the hostage-taking, the two Inside Man key characters have too many similar features to be ignored. The short story is that they both are highly intelligent and manipulative, and both are risk-takers. 

Both Frazier and Russell are good chess players when it comes to dealing with other people. Dalton prepared a perfect plan for a bank robbery involving his team and dozens of hostages, with even tiny details taken into account. Detective Frazier took control over dozens of policemen from different units and had to play on different chess boards with a mayor, Madeleine White, Arthur Case, and hostages during interrogation. While being an underdog for two-thirds of the story, Denzel Washington’s character stole initiative, if not particularly from Dalton, but from Case and people who advocated the billionaire’s interests. The closing twenty minutes of Inside Man spotlight Frazier as a protagonist when he fights back the corrupted system impersonated in the characters of a former Nazi collaborator Arthur Case and a slippery fixer, Madeleine White. His natural desire to reveal the bank robbers smoothly transforms into a crusade against the power players. Both Keith Frazier and his darker antipode Dalton Russell are good at reading people, which helped them outmaneuver Case and White. For example, the detective anticipated the dirty game and secretly recorded his private meeting with the mayor and a mysterious woman to use this card later.  

Like Dalton Russell, Detective Keith Frazier has an interest in making more money. While the former opts for bank robbery, the latter craves becoming a Detective First Grade to be able to propose to his girlfriend. Completely different means to gain the same result, though Frazier’s appetites are more moderate than Russell’s desire to become wealthy and suck pina coladas with six girls. The other similarity between the two lies in the second element: they both could do this. Russell promoted his ability to execute a perfect bank robbery, and the detective took the challenge of dealing with the hostage-taking in the middle of Manhattan because he knew he could deal with it. Both men took their parts in the story because they knew that, at the end of the day, they would make out of this with fame and money. Recalling Frazier’s last case with Madrugada, dealing with robberies was his craft in police, and apart from a bank robbery, Dalton Russell had a mysterious background regarding his knowledge about Arthur Case’s dirty money sources. 

ARTHUR CASE: THE BANKER

While it is difficult to regard Dalton Russell as a villain, and the character of Keith Frazier lies in the gray zone of virtues and vices, the dark past of an elderly billionaire Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer) made him the only obvious bad guy in the story, even though he did not directly endanger people in the bank like Russell did. One would argue whether he should be treated as a villain fifty years after his dastardly deeds of collaborating with the Nazis at the expense of other people, his friends. The answer is definitely yes. The war crimes had no time limits, and Case’s profiteering in the 1940s during the war could not be washed up by theatrical charity and donations to the Jewish foundations. The elderly billionaire admits that he sold his soul to the devil, but it is better to say for money, and he has tried to buy it out since then. The key point here is money and dealing with his sins like an asset that could be bought back. It doesn’t matter whether Arthur Case’s remorse is genuine. He built his financial empire in the United States using bloody money and spent half a century hiding his true personality beyond rich suits and large cabinets. 

There is another important detail that is often mistreated by this character while debating his villainy. When Dalton Russell took control over the Manhattan bank, Arthur Case used dirty means once again, particularly involving Madeleine White and her connections, to set the situation by bribing, lying, and deception. He made a kind of confession to Mrs. White only because he paid her and regarded her as too corrupt to speak out his truth, and had to do this when she had already found out the truth. Toward the end of the story, Case’s intention to hide the truth about his past remains as strong as half a century ago. In a wider sense, despite all his charity and making friends with the victims of the Holocaust and their families, probably donating money for the memorials, Arthur Case remained the same villain with zero moral foundations when it came to his power and image. Anyone who tries to hurt his empire, whether a bank robber, a talky detective, a city fixer, or a mayor, becomes his enemy. 

MADELEINE WHITE: THE FIXER

Madeleine White (Jodie Foster), like Dalton Russell, belongs more to the gray zone of morality than villainy. She is an ambitious and high-aspiring New York fixer, but her greed for fame is restricted to the small percentage of VIPs, a layer of aristocrats and millionaires. Her final objectives lie far beyond receiving fat envelopes with money, as she has created a whole system of guarantors and references, like she calls her ex-clients. This means that in the future, they would have to do a favor for Madeleine White if she asked for it. In a wider sense, she not only develops a reputation among the most influential people in the city, but she also makes them her patrons. She used to get rid of their dirty laundry, and thus was also dangerous in knowing their secrets. One of her last words to Arthus Case was: ‘I’d love to tell you what a monster you are, but I have to help Bin Laden’s nephew by a co-op on Park Avenue.’ She does not feel any affection for the high and mighty New York society but treats them only as a part of the job, and at the end of the day, she disregards most of them for their deeds. She masks her attitude toward Arthur Case beyond the joke and a reference to another evil, but even for Madelaine White, her collaboration with the Nazis during the Holocaust was too much. This was probably the primary reason why Detective Keith Frazier gave her the pen recording device, his card in the sleeve, since White would probably not intervene in the upcoming public ostracism of Case. 

Taking into consideration White, her practical approach toward her VIP clients, it comes as no surprise that she neglects other people on her way. Hostages inside the bank mean nothing for her compared to her task of dealing with the deposit box 392, and since she is an excellent reader of people like Frazier and Dalton, she understands that the latter was not going to make a blood bath. Her attitude toward other people she perfectly explained during a visit to Dalton: ‘The sooner that you stop being my problem and start becoming my solution, the better off you’ll be.’ Getting ahead, she underestimated both Dalton Russell and Detective Frazier as her opponents, mostly because of her insolent attitude and a sense of self-importance. At the end of the story, while Keith Frazier openly confronts White and solves her problems, she starts to respect him for risk-taking and using some of her methods. She also probably feels respect for Dalton Russell, his determination, manipulative actions, and the final result that she managed to escape. Whether her reputation as a top problem-solver would be damaged after Case’s downfall is debateful. 

WHY THE ROBBERS DIDN’T TAKE MONEY AND THE SECRETS OF DEPOSIT BOX 392

When dozens of hostages finally left the bank and flooded the street, police squads broke into every premise and discovered neither robbers nor a dead body, which they had been shown before. Apart from the lack of suspects and victims, the weapons the robbers used appeared to be plastic toys. As they found out later, all the money was left in the vault, and the managing company under Arthur Case was interested in sweeping the whole robbery under the rug. Detective Keith Frazier and his partner, Detective Bill Mitchel (Chiwetel Ejiofor), interrogated every hostage and failed to reveal suspects among them since each person had a sort of alibi. Even Frazier’s captain advised him to forget about the case, as no one was interested in pursuing it. Not only the mystery of the bank robbery, but this attitude of all sides, including the involvement of Madeleine White and Arthur Case, pushed Detective Frazier to keep the investigation moving forward, and he revealed that one deposit box number 392 had existed since 1948, and the establishment of the bank by Case. He got the warrant to open it, and inside, Frazier found a ring with a diamond and a hint from Dalton Russell to follow this ring. While Frazier’s motives still included the capture of suspects, his new investigation became aimed at the story behind Arthur Case’s wealth. 

How did you know about all this?

Does not matter. The fact is, all lies, all evil deeds, they stink. You can cover them up for a while, but they don’t go away. 

Half a movie before Keith Frazier understood that whatever the robbers came for, it probably had to do with the deposit box 392, Dalton Russell told Madeleine White a short story about Arthur Case and the origin of his fortune. Later on, she openly asks Case about the content of the box and he admits not only the documents about his past as a Nazi collaborator but also the story of the Cartier ring, which once belonged to a wealthy family of French Jews whom Case betrayed to gain their wealth. As a result, all of them were killed during the Holocaust, and no one could testify against a younger banker. The reason why he did not destroy the documents and get rid of the ring remains a mystery, but probably, Case felt his guilt and kept the evidence to remember his past. The movie does not answer what the source of Russell’s knowledge about Arthur Case, the deposit box, and the Cartier Ring is. One interesting theory says that it was one of Russell’s partners in crime, a Jewish jewelry expert who had known the truth, maybe being a descendant of those French Jews.

It is easy to assume that Dalton Russell has always planned to reveal the dirty past of Arthur Case to the world since he left the ring in the deposit box with a note directed particularly to Frazier days before he managed to leave the bank. Maybe in the stage of planning, both the envelope and the ring were to remain an insurance, like Russell said to White, but interaction with Detective Frazier made him believe that the policeman would finish the business. At one point in their communication, Dalton Russell said that Frazier was too smart for a cop. As the story comes to an end, both Arthur Case and Madeleine White overestimate their influence, and the background of Case’s fortune falls under the interest of the War Crimes Issues Office. Getting back to Dalton, at the end, he says that money is not worth much if you can’t face yourself in the mirror. Yes, they did not get money from the vault, but the robbers took diamonds and managed to evade police suspicions and their possible pursuer, Arthur Cas,e would probably be concerned with other issues. 

INSIDE MAN ENDING EXPLAINED

While the fact that Dalton Russell succeeded in leaving the Case Manhattan Bank using the main entrance is obvious, several other storylines deserve an explanation. In the last scene, we see Madeleine White, who is having a launch with the mayor, when Detective Frazier confronts them with the contact info of the War Crimes Issues Office in Washington. Since Mrs. White knows the truth about Arthur Case and his past, she gets the hint clearly: she should not show loyalty to this particular client, whose downfall will damage anyone besides him, especially the mayor. It is obvious that Frazier meant the mayor to become the moving force in revealing Case’s crimes, and he gave White the record of their informal talks as an argument to pursue the case. As a shifty character, the mayor puts the skid under anyone who threatens his career, including the famous billionaire. Did Frazier make copies? It doesn’t matter anymore since he has enough evidence to ruin Arthur Case’s public image. The movie does not say this clearly, but Frazier found out the truth about the Cartier ring and its previous owners, the victims of the Holocaust. 

Speaking about the scene of Frazier and his partner visiting Arthur Case in a luxury cabinet in the billionaire’s New York residence, the fate of the latter is decided. While the revelations of bank robbers may have been ridiculed, Detective First Grade Keith Frazier is the person whose investigation would be in high demand, especially at the War Crimes Issues Office. The scene shows how wealthy and influential Case has become owing to the bloody Nazi money and his ambitions in the last fifty years. It should be no surprise that he has stopped at nothing, especially others’ well-being, when building a financial empire. In public, he gave generous donations to pay for his soul out, but in the shadows, he lied and ruined the lives of others to accumulate his billions of dollars. At the end of their unpleasant talk, it becomes obvious that a nonessential person like a police detective appears to destroy the all-mighty Case by just sticking close to the truth and not making a moral compromise. 

With the story coming to an end, we see Keith Frazier come home to his fiancée and reveal a diamond in his pocket. First of all, he understands that he met Dalton Russell a week after the robbery when he and Detective Mitchell came back to the bank for the deposit box 392. It becomes obvious that his key nemesis, the mastermind behind the events, actually left the bank through the main entrance. Since both men feel respect for each other, Frazier gives credit to Russell, who has hidden inside the bank all this time. The two men became unexpected partners in unmasking the former war criminal Arthur Case. Getting back to the diamond in the pocket, it was not only Russell’s hint to Frazier about the epilogue of his plan, but also a sign of respect to the detective. A week before, Frazier could not afford a wedding ring for his girlfriend, and now he is a Detective First Grade and has a diamond, which nobody wants to investigate. He waited for years for this promotion, and a family could finally move to a larger apartment, a reasonable compensation for being on the losing side in the perfect bank robbery.