By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—After watching Inside Man with her father, Sam Zeiden, at our home, Nancy put the DVD in its container on my desk.  "You might want to review this one," she said, when I looked up from the computer.  "It even has a Jewish angle."

Yes it did, and I trust that there has been enough commentary about this movie that I won't be ruining it for anybody if I go so far as to say that a Mossad-like group of perpetrators is behind the heist, not because they want the money, or desire to hurt anyone, but because there is a historic score to settle.

About 40-50 people are taken hostage inside the bank in what was supposed to be a perfect robbery.  The hostages are made to put on the same uniforms as the bank robbers, so it will be difficult for police to tell who is who when ultimately they storm the place.  Even the hostages wouldn't be able to tell for sure.

Among the hostages is Brian (Amir Ali Said), an elementary school-aged boy who has a portable video player.  The leader of the bank heisters, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen) is shocked by the game which is filled with gratuitous street violence.  Here Russell has terrorized 50 people, even beaten some who have not cooperated, and he is lecturing to the boy about the dangers of  such graphic content.  No wonder the boy shakes his head.

Denzel Washington plays Detective Keith Frazier, who is in charge of the hostage negotiations. It doesn't take him too long to realize that these are not your ordinary bank-robbers.  Not only has their planning been meticulous, but they seem to be anticipating his every move.  Furthermore, they don't seem to act the way other bank robbers do, nor do they make typical demands.

Ultimately when we learn what the group's exact motives were (of course, I'm not going to tell you), and when we see what level of precautions that they  took to insure that there were no casualties, we are almost ready to convert the bank robbers from bad guys to good guys.  

Almost.  

But, in truth, we ought not to.  There's still that matter of all the people whom they terrorized—the hostages—who were humiliated, in some cases hurt, and clearly in panic for their lives.  

Even if the bank robbers succeeded in righting a historic wrong, the means they employed were unethical and illegal. The ends do not justify the means.  And maybe that was director Spike Lee's ultimate message.