2006 was a good year for Denzel Washington on the big screen, as he starred in two high-quality thrillers: "Dejavu" and "Inside the Man." Just as Dejavu was Vertigo as a time travel action movieInside Man was director Spike Lee's 21st century update of Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon.

Written by Richard Gerwitz, Inside Man follows a hostage situation during a Manhattan bank robbery. Washington stars as detective Keith Frazier as a hostage negotiator of the NYPD, battling the leader of the robbers, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen). The story didn't start with Lee (Ron Howard was in talks to direct Inside Man first.), but he did his own thing. Inside Man is definitely more of a crowd pleaser than something like Do The Right Thing, as evidenced by the fact that it's also Lee's highest-grossing film to date, but it's absolutely a Spike Lee joint.

Lee's range as a director comes in part from the breadth of his knowledge of movies. When not directing, he teaches film classes at his graduate alma mater, New York University. Lumet is one of Lee's film idols, and he relished the chance to make a film in the same vein as Lumet's classic Dog Day Afternoon.

Published in 1975, Dog Day Afternoon was based on an actual 1972 Brooklyn bank robbery/hostage situation. John Wojtowicz (renamed Sonny Worczyk and played by Al Pacino in the film) and Salvatore Naturile (played by John Casale) attempted to rob a Chase Manhattan bank because Wojtowicz wanted money to pay for his wife Elizabeth Eden's confirmation surgery. gender. The report suggests there may have been additional motives, including mob involvement, but the film focuses on Sonny's efforts to help his pet Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon) become her.

Promotional materials for "Dog Day Afternoon" emphasize the fact that it is a true story. The film's tagline, which appeared in several shortened forms on various posters, reads:

"The robbery was supposed to last 10 minutes. 4 hours later, the bank was like a circus sideshow. 8 hours later, it was the hottest thing on live TV. 12 hours later, it was all history. And it's all true."

"Inside Man" is no true story, but as a piece of film, how does it compare to Dog Day Afternoon?

Spike Lee is a New Yorker and many of his movies (including Inside Man) are set in his hometown. When he adapted David Benioff's The 25th Hour, he added a new layer to the story by using it to examine a New York City that had just been rocked by 9/11. Lumet was also a New Yorker; he worked on Broadway as a young man, and despite his prolific film career, never left Manhattan for Hollywood. Dog Day Afternoon is a quintessential New York movie: the film opens with a montage of Brooklyn on what is supposed to be the hottest day of the year, and in every shot you can feel the glistening, unbearable humidity. Of course it's one of Lee's favorite movies, as he described to film critic Emmanuel Levy.

In the same interview, Lee said he felt Gerwitz's script for Inside Man was a "contemporary take on that kind of movie (meaning 'Dog Afternoon'). The surface-level comparisons are obvious—both are about a bank robbery that escalates into a hostage situation—but the perspectives are different.

"Dog Day Afternoon" is about robbers and their shenanigans. Most of the movie is a slow-boil pressure cooker where Sonny knows he's nasty but still can't accept it. The movie ends with - spoilers ahead - Sal dead and Sonny arrested. "Inside the Man," however, is told from the perspective of the police, while the robbers are masked and enigmatic. (Lee told Levy that Washington sometimes has a hard time showing off Clive Owen in disguise.) Instead of the heist going FUBAR the second it starts, Dalton Russell's crew devises an elaborate plan and sticks to it, resulting in the top and without the jump. "Dog Day Afternoon" is a dramedy of errors, while "Inside Man" is a slick thriller machine.

That's not to minimize Lumet's influence on Lee, though. Speaking to Vulture in 2017Lee mentioned that he screened "Dog Day Afternoon" for his cast and crew before they made "Inside Man," which was both an "homage" to Lumet and gave the crew an idea of ​​what they were doing. They even scored a small cameo from the original film: in Dog Day Afternoon, Lionel Pino plays a pizza delivery boy delivering food to Sonny and his hostages:

Warner Bros.

30 years later, he played the same role in "Inside Man" (only at that time, pizza boxes had bugs inside so the police could listen in on robbers).

Lee and Washington are teaming up again for a remake of Akira Kurosawa's High & Low. and I'm confident they can do that film justice the same way they did for Lumet and Dog Day Afternoon with Inside the Man.