The arrival of a new Spike Lee film is always an event, and Inside Man has been no exception. This taut, unpredictable thriller tells follows the attempts of a New York hostage negotiator, Detective Frazier (Denzel Washington) to resolve a bank siege. The leader of the robber gang, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), plays mind games with the police, and is seemingly not motivated by money. It is the job of Detective Frazier to find out what makes him tick, and so find a way to end the situation.

The audience can relate to Washington's character from the start. The play-like opening sees Owen's criminal acting, in the shape of a Shakespearean prologue, as he tells the audience "to pay strict attention to what I say," Detective Frazier appears as a much more rounded individual. He is the human centre of the film, and this is shown most clearly by the inclusion of his personal life. For instance, his girlfriend calls him at several points throughout the film, and their domestic scenes bookend the main action. When Frazier finally manages to get home to his lady, the audience cannot help but root for him, especially after the day he's had. No other character in Inside Man is developed to this extent.

The intrigue surrounding Owen and Foster's characters, for example, is necessary; after all, deducing the motivation of the other main characters is as much the audience's task as it is Frazier's. Yet, despite being the protagonist of the piece, Frazier is by no means the stereotypical movie hero. He is constantly one step behind the siege mastermind, Russell, throughout the film. His immediate reaction to the challenge of the siege is an ironic, "bad guys, here I come!" but, unlike the police officers in those 1970s Sidney Lumet-directed films that the movie references - Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Serpico (1973) and The Anderson Tapes (1971) - Frazier is no quasi-omniscient being who solves the mysteries of the case from minute clues. If anything, his occasional inappropriate actions suggests that the screenwriter, Russell Gewirtz, is having fun with this subversion of the 'hardboiled detective' stereotype.

At times, Frazier is also seen to be vulnerable, and this inserts another dimension to his seemingly straightforward sleuthing role. In his first meeting with Jodie Foster's icy 'power-broker', Madeleine White, Frazier is put in his place by her cool rebuff of his services. As she puts it, the investigation of the pressing matters that lie behind the siege is "above his pay grade." Her negotiations with the bank robbers leave Frazier in the dark, and undermine his authority.

Additionally, Spike Lee adds greater depth to Frazier's character in certain scenes, by foregrounding his ethnic identity, and his attitudes towards race. The instances, in which Frazier has to confront racial differences, provide the audience with an insight into Lee's concern for the treatment of different ethnic groups by police departments across America. Frazier himself is as guilty of this 'insensitivity' as his serving officers. This is seen most clearly in his treatment of a released hostage, who just happens to be Sikh. After being mistaken for "an Arab," and therefore subjected to various indignities, the Sikh pinpoints the reason for his victimisation, and complains how frequently he is now stopped-and-searched at airports. When he asks, with good reason, "what happened to my fucking civil rights?" Frazier jokes, in return: "But you can always get a cab." The flippant remark does not go down well, and, in this instance, Frazier's nonchalant attitude is hard to condone.

Frazier also finds himself on the receiving end of insulting comments. While in conversation with a cop, far junior in rank to him, who casually uses racist terms, and liberally peppers his speech with offensive stereotypes, Frazier is at first silently shocked, and then forced to call him out on his attitudes. Nevertheless, Frazier is far from alone in having prejudices, or being victimised by those of others, as can be seen through Lee's exploration of race and division throughout the film, which involves all of the characters in due course.

As witnesses to the siege, and with greater knowledge than Detective Frazier, it is up to the viewer to wade through the relative moralities of each character in the movie, and decide who was really justified in their actions. When you find that judgement impossible to make, then you realise the difficulties of Frazier's position throughout the film.