Inside Man

The film is set in New York and tells the story of five robbers who enter the main branch of a large and prestigious bank, Manhattan Trust, owned and chaired by powerful businessperson Arthur Case.

During the robbery, employees and customers are deprived of any personal belongings and forced to wear suits identical to those of the kidnappers.

The management of the thorny affair is assigned to detectives Keith Frazier and Bill Mitchell, who have command of the police department that is coordinated by Capt. John Darius; Frazier struggles to get Darius to accept his leadership, partly because of a corruption investigation hanging over his head.

Chairman Arthur Case is immediately informed of the robbery attempt and the kidnapping in progress; his concern grows when he learns that the branch involved is the same in which he has secured a safe deposit box, whose contents cannot fall into anyone else’s hands for any reason.

To ensure this does not happen, Case hires Madeline White, an expert in not-always-transparent international negotiations who often acts on the edge of legality.

At this point, the characters involved begin to pursue their own goals, engaging in a complex negotiation that everyone approaches with different strategies.

With a surprising ending!

Want to know what to pay attention to?

I’ll tell you in a moment: in the meantime, watch the trailer.

How to watch the film

Certainly, one of the best thrillers I have ever watched, with a layout and narrative technique that leaves the viewer glued to the video for its entire duration (and beyond…): the desire to catch all the details led me to watch the film again sometime later.

For anyone who is not satisfied with watching a film but wants to grasp useful insights from it, I want to mention below some aspects that I found interesting:

• The difficulty of managing a more or less large group of people when leadership is undermined by suspicion or even slander;
• The nonchalance with which a leader, especially when he/she holds political power, can consider disposing of staff members and their ethics;
• The management of a negotiation focused systematically on the other side’s goals, avoiding getting caught up in worry and spending needless energy in dealing with its effects;
• The results that can be achieved in focalizing attention on solving problems rather than the impact they may have on ourselves;
• The attempt to influence others’ behaviour by threat or even blackmail.

If at the bottom of this list, you were to identify a dominant topic this is precisely the theme of negotiation and its effective management.

Have you already cancelled your plans for tonight?

Cast

Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kim Director, Amir Ali Said, Samantha Ivers