Why are we so fascinated by movies about bank robberies?

I’m not talking the slip-the-teller-a-note kind, or ones that rely on gunfire and car chases. I mean smart, well-planned capers like the one in “Inside Man,” where a team of masked gunmen hold several dozen people hostage for hours in a Manhattan bank, then let them all go and vanish – without taking any money.

The script is a laudable one from first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz. While it’s not perfect, Gewirtz accomplishes the rare feat of creating interesting characters, giving them credible lines to say and devising a scheme for a bank robbery that’s believable enough to stir inspiration in less scrupulous minds.

As the central character, a New York City police detective, Denzel Washington joins director Spike Lee for a fourth collaboration. He’s up against Clive Owen as the mastermind behind the hostage situation. Wisely, the film opens with a monologue by Owen to the audience, giving viewers a character to identify and form an opinion of before the action starts. Once inside the bank, he’s all business, and there’s not much to go off of when deciding whether or not we sympathize with his actions.

Trying to figure out Owen’s motives without the benefit of his helpful introduction, Washington gives another fine performance. The department’s regular hostage negotiator is out for the day, and Washington seizes the chance to step up and redeem himself after a handful of failed busts. As Owen’s scheme unfolds, Washington’s detective talents emerge, sometimes to his own surprise.

But his negotiations are complicated by the arrival of Jodie Foster, an enigmatic woman who wheels and deals in blackmail-worthy secrets of the rich and powerful. She’s hired by Christopher Plummer, chairman of the bank under siege, to protect the contents of a single safe-deposit box. Calling on her influence with the mayor, she finagles access to the situation and goes about trying to outplay the police and the criminals.

Watching this much talent in one movie is a treat. (Willem Dafoe also makes a nearly throwaway appearance as the head of the tactical squad on the scene.) And the screenplay does them justice, for the most part. Washington’s casual conversations with the street cop who called in the robbery, for example, or Owen’s remarks about a youngster’s violent video game, give the film a familiarity and depth that’s missing from most cops-and-robbers movies.

Director Lee keeps viewers guessing about how the caper works by cutting into the linear story line with “flash-forwards” to scenes of Washington and his partner questioning several of the released hostages. Once the plot catches up to that point and the incident defuses, however, one last clue keeps Washington on the trail of the perpetrator for an unusually long denouement. There’s meant to be a secondary climax after all that life-and-death tension, but it’s a moral one that will feel flat to police movie junkies who are already missing those gun battles and car chases.