Mr.Chachee

I saw the newest Spike Lee film, Inside Man, this weekend, and it was quite good. Clearly a heist film, but with some of those nice twists that need to be forced into the stale genre. I know Spike Lee is a good director and in general I like a lot of his movies.

The one thing that bothers me about his movies is that he seems almost heavy-handed with his racial commentary. Now I do enjoy that his movies show a realistic breakdown of races. Unlike some movies, his films feature people from nearly every background (including Albanian) and rarely are these characters typecast. It’s nice seeing a film with diversity that reflects the real world’s diversity, especially in New York. With that said, I can’t stand the overly blatant racial commentary he throws in movies. Inside Man features a Middle-Eastern man, who works at the bank, getting harassed by the cops. Now yes, I’m sure this does happen in real life, but the degree to which he takes it is ridiculous.

There’s such a thing as being subtle in presenting themes, and he does a good job with other non-ethnic themes. It just seems like he is trying too hard to draw attention to racial issues, and maybe he does that intentionally, but it annoys me. It sort of takes me out of the movie to see it happen and think “oh, here he goes again.” But maybe it’s my fault? Maybe there are people who need to be bashed over the head with these themes and ideas to have them ring through.

Anyways, it was a good movie.

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