At least to the owner of the bank. But more of that below.

It is a bright shiny day in Manhattan and 4 painters walk into the Wall Street branch of Manhattan Trust. Within moments, the painters become robbers and place the bank under a down-to-the-detail siege, taking 50 customers and staff hostage.

Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) is the cop called upon to handle the negotiations with the robbers. They ask for a plane and buses. Pretty normal stuff. And that is what is going to trigger in Frazier's mind that something is wrong. That, and the fact that the mayor of New York brings along Madaline White - power broker extraordinaire - to the bank and tells Frazier that if he works with her, his flagging career will get a boost.

So what is wrong with this robbery? That is going to be what sticks with you while you watch the film.

Lee gives you many clues along the way because the story is not told sequentially. We are given flash forwards to later, after the siege is over and the hostages are interviewed. I wondered why Lee did this, but it becomes obvious when you get to the end of the robbery (hostages released) and the movie has another 40 minutes to go. If he had told the story in order of occurrence, (Robbery, then Interviews, then Follow Up on the crime) it would have been far less powerful.

There is a great cast in this film. Washington (Out of Time, Training Day) plays a cop for the third time this decade but such a good actor he is still very interesting. We wonder what has gone wrong with his career - evidently some money is missing from a bust (sounds like another of his films) but we are given no details and don't know if he is guilty or innocent.

Dalton Russell is played by Clive Owen (Sin City, Closer). He is cold, calculating, and except for the problems noted below, is great in this role. Willem Dafoe (Spider Man, Platoon) is smart in a supporting role-playing a captain of the special services unit of the NYPD. Lee has also packed the film with about a dozen other actors who have small parts, brilliantly played. The best part is Ms. White, played by Jodi Foster (Panic Room, Silence of the Lambs). She reminds us of Harvey Keitel's Winston Wolfe in Pulp Fiction in that you know you need her desperately, but you don't want to do business with her because she charges a lot and after what she has done for you, she owns you.

And now to the spoiler. To tell you what that coveted item is will ruin the first hour so I will only say this: In my opinion, the main thing that the robbers want, or share what they want, should no longer not exist in the first place. If the owner of the bank (Christopher Plummer from Syriana and The Sound of Music) had eliminated it from the safe deposit box, there would be far less of interest in the movie. And it is something he SHOULD have eliminated and we are not given a good reason for its existence. We also have no idea how Dalton found out about the item or why he wants it. There does not seem to be a motive, which Dalton tells us is "because I can." For those reasons, this movie does not get the great rating it could have.

You are going to like Inside Man. If you take the title literally, you will figure it all out earlier (hint hint) but even if you don't, the acting, story, action and THE MUSIC (especially the opening) will keep you interested.

Hank Yuloff is a film critic and entertainment guru in Encino, California.