Foster Gets Inside

On a news day slower than a snail with chronic fatigue syndrome, we bring you the other of several small morsels of interest. Raise a cheer (or, being Monday morning, raise your eyebrows) to the news that Jodie Foster is all signed up to appear in Spike Lee's next project,Inside Man. The film has at this stage been described as a complex cops and robbers tale (with a twist, of course), pitting bank robber Clive Owen against cop Denzel Washington. The bank robber is trying to pull off that elusive 'perfect heist'. Fate has other ideas, and the standoff ensues. Foster enters the already tense scenario playing a lawyer who further complicates the situation. Never one to coast, we're expecting Jodie to wring every last drop out of the role, and raise this already promising premise. We're thinking Heat, we're thinking Dog Day Afternoon, we're thinking the good bits of The Negotiator. Inside Man is a rare but welcome step into genre filmmaking for Lee. It's from the pen of first time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz (although if you believe IMDb, Dutch born writer / director Menno Mejyes had a hand in creating the story too), and is being produced by Donna Langley, Kristin Lowe and Kim Roth. Last seen delivering perfect French in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, Foster also has the creepy, airborne thriller Flightplan due to hit screens later this year.