Reasonably intelligent bank-robbery flick with a cast good enough to make you ignore most of the plot holes and implausible twists.
Clive Owen heads the team of robbers, who take 30 or so hostages at a Manhattan bank and demand a plane to fly them away. Denzel Washington is the chief hostage negotiator on the scene; he realizes very quickly that Owen is up to more than just a bank robbery, but can't quite figure out what's really going on.
Christopher Plummer is the head of the bank's board, and his own personal safe deposit box is in this branch. Needing to protect whatever is in that box, he calls in the mysterious power broker Jodie Foster, who pulls a few strings with the mayor and gets permission to go into the bank and talk to Owen.
The performances are top-notch; Owen has a silky confidence that clashes nicely with Washington's rough-edged professionalism. Foster's role isn't large, but after her recent run of mom-in-peril movies, it's nice to see her playing someone a bit more commanding. Key supporting roles are well handled by Willem Dafoe (who normally annoys me immensely) and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
The biggest flaws in the movie's story involve Plummer's character; it's impossible to believe that he would have kept the mysterious contents of that safe deposit box instead of destroying them, and Plummer is ten or twenty years too young to have acquired those items in the way the plot requires.
But none of that is likely to bother you until after the movie's over; while it's happening, Lee keeps things moving briskly enough that you don't take time to worry about plot details.
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