Inside Man/Headscratchers


 * How old exactly is Arthur Chase supposed to be? Based on what he says, he was already a successful banker during the Nazi era, which would mean he had to be at least in his 30s back then (it's hard to imagine anyone younger being a successful banker in the 1940s). But the movie takes place in 2005 or 2006 ("Gold Digger" was released in 2005), which would mean he has to be over 90 years old. He certainly doesn't look that old. Christopher Plummer was born in 1929, and he was only 15 when WWII ended. They should've chosen an older actor if they'd wanted that part of the story to feel credible.
 * He's stated to have been quite young. He may only have been a bank employee.
 * Correct me if I'm making any mistakes here, but I'm curious about something: the cops know that there are only two women who could fit the description of one of the robbers, right? So how hard would it be for them to monitor both until one of them makes a mistake and reveals their true nature? Would it be illegal? Take up too much resources? I don't get it...
 * Da Chief said to drop the case. No budget for surveillance. Also, eyewitnesses are often just plain wrong, and "she had big boobs", as Stevie herself pointed out, is a pretty flimsy reason for surveillance.
 * Fair enough, but the nonchalant way the whole is dealt with by the authorities is beyond ridiculous; just because there's been no apparent propriety crime doesn't mean a crime hasn't happened, the poor hostages are most certainly going to suffer from the effects of the crime for years to come. And no pressure either? Hell, the media would be hounding them night and day to solve this case, unless they could be bought too (which isn't implausible in the world as it is shown in this movie... but it's a far cry from real life).
 * If they wanted to get revenge on Christopher Plummer, why didn't they just come up behind him and hit him with a rock or something? Instead, Clive Owen comes up with this incredibly complicated plot that involves taking dozens of hostages for what is apparently more than a day. Those people are never going to be OK. PTSD is a bitch. They won't be able to sleep properly for months. They'll have nightmares for the rest of their lives. Owen's character should DIAF.
 * He didn't want revenge, he wanted the perfect bank robbery, and to be able to look himself in the mirror. Stealing from innocents? Nope. Stealing from a war criminal? Yep.
 * Is Jody Foster supposed to be a bad guy for helping Osama bin Laden's nephew buy a condo? bin Laden has a huge family (he is the youngest of twenty-three children, he might easily have a hundred nephews). Probably most of them think Osama is (was) a waste of oxygen. Why shouldn't Foster help one buy a home, for crying out loud?
 * Ummmmm, wasn't that a joke?
 * Keep in mind that this film was written and shot just a few years after the 9/11, so a relative of OBL buying a house in New York would probably face massive media attention and drawn the ire of the general public without someone to smooth things over. To this day some people are still sour about the myth that Saudi Royals/Bin Laden family members were flown out of the country right after 9/11, now try to imagine how they would have felt about the Bin Laden family buying property in New York around 2005/6. Even the nephew's reassurances about not having seen his uncle in 9 years puts the timing a little close to when OBL started ramping up his anti-USA attacks, with stuff like the bombing of the US embassy in Kenya. And lastly there is simple guilt by association and such. If you don't think emotions and prejudice could take over in that situation, imagine how a Wermacht officer trying to move to Israel in the 1950s or 60s would have gone down...
 * The cops bug the criminals and get a recording that is obviously a political speech. Instead of saying "Ah, the criminals have outfoxed us" they decide to play it to the assembled crowd. Gee, what a shock: out of the 100 people in New York who could recognize spoken Albanian, one of them just happens to be the guy standing closest to the police command truck. But, sadly, that guy only recognizes the language, he can't speak it and like the cops is too stupid to guess that it's the world's only famous Albanian speaker, Enver Hoxha (I guessed it, BTW, and I don't speak a word of the language). So what do they do? The obvious thing, and call the Department of Slavic Languages at Columbia University and ask them to get a Albanian-speaking graduate student on the phone? No, they get the Albanian-recognizing dumb guy to have his skanky Albanian ex-wife to drive over through mid-town traffic -- because hey, it's not like there's an emergency and they're in a hurry -- and she insists on a bribe. Rather than just pointing out they will charge her with obstruction, criminal facilitation, or whatever if she doesn't help and deporting her back to Albania, the cops pay her the bribe so she can tell them "Ah, the criminals have outfoxed you -- they're just play a tape of an old political speech."
 * They don't have time to call her bluff, and she has no real obligation to help them. I'm not sure she could legally be charged with diddly.
 * If I was Arthur Chase, the first thing I'd do once the bank reopened for business is check on (and remove) the contents of my safety deposit box. Instead, he leaves it to be discovered by the cops.
 * Running down to check it would be suspicious, and if it had been removed, there was nothing he could do.
 * Why would it be suspicious to visit his own bank? It's certainly no more suspicious than what he *did* do. And yes, if it had been removed there was nothing he could have done -- but it *wasn't* removed, and if he had collected the ring before Frazier had a chance to figure things out, there would have been no smoking gun. After all the trouble he went to trying to make sure no one discovered his secret, he just walks away?