Alfred Hitchcock complained abut “the plausibles,” his term for those who would always look for holes in his plots, thereby missing the fun of the whole. But the “Inside Man” screenplay by Russell Gewirtz isn’t a Hitchcockian thriller. It does make demands that we believe certain things.

Suave, convincing actor Clive Owen plays self-assured Dalton Russell, who has assembled a crew and is masterminding a bank robbery in downtown Manhattan. It is a very clever one, planned to the last detail. But what is he really after?

Denzel Washington is in top form as Detective Keith Frazier, a smart hostage negotiator specialist called upon to extricate the hostages that Russell has seized inside the bank. Frazier’s dialogue is snappy—talk is the smarter aspect of the screenplay—and he is tough, often funny and probing in trying to learn Russell’s game. Chiwetel Ejiofor is good as Frazier’s sidekick detective.

There’s pleasure in watching chic-looking Jodie Foster as a mysterious fixer who is hired by Christopher Plummer as the bank head for a personal mission to pull off in the midst of the robbery. It entails getting into the bank and dealing with Russell. Foster looks great, but her role in the script is rather outrageous, further straining credibility. Still, watching her in action is one of the film’s pleasures.

So is watching Detective Frazier dealing with released hostages and witnesses. The dialogue is frequently smart-assed. When a man protests that the police have taken his turban and rails against the way people of his ethnicity are treated, Frazier shoots back, “I’ll bet you don’t have trouble getting a cab.” Lee and director of photographer Matthew Libatique make the streets of Manhattan come alive. There are also interesting forays when plans are being considered for how to invade the bank. Scenes of what the gunplay would be like illustrate the thinking.