The plot of "Inside Man" revolves around the perfect bank robbery...or so you think. The entire film is based upon deception. Even the direction throws you for a loop: the editing upsets your sense of chronology, film colors and gradient change, offsetting the "reality" of the story, and the entire tense storyline is speckled not with true comic relief, but dark humor, social commentary, and closeups of breasts.
This was my first Spike Lee film, and it certainly took some getting used to, not only for the no-longer-novel twisted-chronology technique and the film grade changes, but for the seemingly irrelevant Arab and Jew remarks made by characters, sexy conversations, and a brief lesson on political correctness which Denzel's character gives to an NYPD cop (which actually have quite a bit to do with the plot). The whole movie would seem quite random, except that the well-written script and indie-style directing techniques tightly integrate the parts of the whole.
All in all, I was pleasantly surprised, able to think about and anticipate situations much as the main detective character was in the movie's reality, and never bored for knowing already what was going to happen. In other words, "Inside Man" is a perfect balance between too predictable and stupidly upended. Very nice.