Movie Reviews for The Insider

The Insider

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Movie Reviews of The Insider

Movie Review: The Insider (1999)
Summary: 5 Stars

Loosely based on a similar real-life tobacco industry media predicament, "The Insider" is an honest, taut portrayal of how one man's willingness to comply with the media and speak his mind can change more things than he could ever imagine. Al Pacino gives his best performance outside of "The Godfather II" and "Scarface", depicting the veteran "60 Minutes" television show producer Lowell Bergman, who is on a hot trail of a story involving the corrupt tobacco industries. Russell Crowe, fresh off fine performances in "L.A. Confidential" and "Courage Under Fire", plays an insider source for Bergman after he loses his job as a prominent tobacco company excecutive.

When these two men join forces in a battle against the cigarette production and distribution company, Jeffery Wigand (Crowe) has his world turned outside down with death threats and media coverage. Believing that Bergman has set up him to fall, he later realizes that both not only want to save their reputations, but they are striving for the same goal--to communicate the truth. Pacino is in rare, spectacular form, while Crowe is more than adequate as the counterpart. Supporting the lead stars is Plummer as the incomporable Mike Wallace, portraying the strong television icon to near perfection.

Although over two-and-a-half hours, "The Insider" moves at a quick pace and keeps the audience guessing both Wigand and Bergman's next moves. Michael Mann shoots and cuts a brilliant, beautiful piece of visual artistry, solidifying himself as one of the top directors heading into the next century. A masterpiece of intellect and honor, setting itself a part from many other media-dramas of its kind. Exhilerating and captivating.

Movie Review: I kept waiting for something to justify the build up.
Summary: 3 Stars

That's the tragedy of The Insider. Because now, a few years of perspective later, we realize that Wygand's inside story is both obvious and relatively unimportant. Sure, it caused some big tobacco settlements to be struck, but it packs relatively little dramatic punch. And so all this pomp and circumstance about his revelations and their impact on society at large has no legs. And the loud, pretentious soundtrack, the slow motion effects, the bombastic set-up, well, it's a set-up for disappointment. It's a bit like setting your home movies to a Wagnerian opera.

I gave the movie a three because I thought Pacino's and Plummer's performances, and to a slightly lesser extent, Crowe's, merited it. Plus, being inside the conflict within CBS was fascinating.

Movie Review: SLICK, MESMERIZING THRILLER WITH BIG BOLD QUESTIONS.
Summary: 5 Stars

Al Pacino and Russel Crowe have such intensity you almost feel your veins pop. The conspiracy theory tinged sub-themes are thrillers as it is (big network, big tyke tobacco players, big journalist, strong-arm tactics of corporations, marital relations amidst stressful jobs, etc.) but their rendition in the immaculate screenplay make them even more powerful!

A word about the DVD. Although it has a couple of interesting extras, including glimpses of some of the real characters, the DD 5.1-only soundtrack is a tad disappointing. Except for a couple of early scenes, one in a cafeteria and one with rain, there is virtually no sound in the rear channels. Not up to today's standards for 5.1 sound. Hopefully a newer version of the DVD would have a better transfer.

Regardless of the minor gripe, the film itself is fantastic. I'd recommend this as a library item in a blink.

Movie Review: Michael Mann's Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars

This scene establishes the no-nonsense tone of the movie and the professionalism of the characters. Lowell Bergman is a worldly man who is not afraid to speak his mind. He is willing to go, literally, blind into a potentially dangerous situation to get what he wants. He is a consummate professional who knows how to handle things: the quintessential Mann protagonist. In a way, the professional nature of Mann's characters is reminiscent of the no-nonsense characters that populate the films of Howard Hawks and Don Siegel.

Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe)'s introduction is also important in how it establishes his character. He is shown in the foreground of the scene but is out of focus. There is a party going on in the background that is in focus but we cannot hear it. Wigand is almost obscured by the party goers who are oblivious to him. Wigand is all alone in his office which establishes right away that he is an isolated protagonist. This is reinforced by the shot of him in his office: it is dark, he is alone, very quiet.

While the family life scenes in Heat felt weak and under-developed, they are much stronger and are more crucial to the narrative in The Insider. It doesn't hurt that he's got an excellent cast here: Lindsay Crouse, Diane Venora, Christopher Plummer, Philip Baker Hall, et al.

One of Mann's strengths is how he conveys expositional dialogue. This is very difficult without boring an audience conditioned to tune out during long, talky scenes. However, a scene between Bergman and his co-workers over lunch works because of how Mann shoots and edits the scene. They are sitting around talking and brainstorming about Wigand and the danger of interviewing him. There is a lot of exposition and facts about tobacco being thrown around but Mann uses multiple camera set-ups and has such talented actors speaking the dialogue that it keeps everything interesting. There are a lot of different camera angles in this scene but the editing is not done in a rapid-fire haphazard fashion like in a Michael Bay film where no shot lasts for more than thirty seconds. There is the feeling that Mann knows what an edit means and that they are not intrusive but rather allow the scene to flow organically.

The scene between Bergman and Wigand in the Japanese restaurant is the centerpiece of the film; much in the same way that the Lecktor/Graham conversation in Manhunter and the Hanna/McCauley restaurant scene in Heat are important because they all represent the meeting of the driving forces of their respective films. The characters meet, verbally spar with each other, convey, either implicitly or explicitly, their worldview and most important sort things out between each other. The dialogue in this scene really crackles and pops with intensity.

The DVD is a bit of a disappointment. While the transfer is top notch and the audio is fantastic, the lack of extras is a missed opportunity to be sure. This film deserves the deluxe Criterion Collection treatment. Mann has been revisiting some of his films lately, with a new edition of Manhunter with an audio commentary and new 2-DVD special editions of Heat and Ali on the horizon. Who knows?

Movie Review: What's Wrong With This Picture?
Summary: 4 Stars

So what's wrong with this picture? The same thing that's wrong with another Russell Crowe movie "A Beautiful Mind" and Oliver Stone's earlier movie about the Kennedy assassination. They are all--what an awful word--"docudramas." The viewer is told as the credits go up at the end of this movie that some things have been fictionalized for the "sake of drama." This is a cruel irony since the movie is all about integrity. Surely the "real" story of the cruel joke tobacco companies have played on an unwitting public for years would have been enough to intrigue an audience and sustain a hard-hitting documentary.

The movie is so well-done. I just wish I knew what is real and what isn't here--if we only had a fire wall between fiction and investigative journalism/movies in this country-- surely we are sophisticated enough to handle such a division.