The Insider
directed by Michael Mann
starring Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora and Philip Baker Hall.
playing at theaters accessible to everyone - ie - multiplexes.
*  *  *  *   (four stars)
no time to read the whole review?
THE JIST of MY PROSE
One of those rareities in cinema. An extremely entertaining, beautifully shot and extraordinarily acted film - thought over-done by more than one person I know - that just begs second and third viewings. I concur. Coffee-addled newsmen fighting tobacco-addled corporations for control of the truth : Does it get any better than Michael Mann?

You absolutely must take the time to examine 'The Insider'. It's got such an interesting and
wonderful texture to it. It's really beautiful as a piece of sensationalist cinema regarding
sensationalist television journalism. Russell Crowe has taken himself into the head of Dr.
Jeffrey Wigand and become this man. His physical appearance, the mannerisms - Crowe
deserves recognition in his field - this is acting. This is what actors are paid to do. Pacino
uses Pacino to build around Lowell Bergman. Though I don't feel he resembled Bergman
nearly to the extent of Crowe - he is the presence we always enjoy performing in his true
style : Pacinoism. And Christopher Plummer, my gosh, he is Mike Wallace to the T.
 The movie is about Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe), a physician who was working
for a tobacco company and was fired. He has pangs of conscience and eventually is led
into a world where the truth can be both your weapon and your downfall. Seduced (some
say), by former “60 Minutes” producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino), Wigand becomes a
whistleblower, the ultimate “insider” - a man once trusted with the sensitive knowledge
that could destroy a corporation and who must decide whether or not to expose it to the
world on television, in the courtroom and even among his family. When he decides to
speak out, CBS (who airs “60 Minutes”) kills the story because it would be breaching his
confidentiality contract (or the network pressured by a deal with the ruthless tobacco
company). This riveting true story is told in such close cinema verite style, the sequences,
such as the famous interview (that was not aired in it’s entirety until months after taping)
seems to be a replica, a perfect re-creation of an event that defines our moral issues as
good as any on the news today.

 They really had a lot of respect for Wigand's position, for Wigand's life and for
the situation that all of these newsmen found themselves handling poorly. Now the story
can vindicate itself fluidly and without reproach, coddling only to it's need to entertain us
(which it does in spades). It's brooding, somewhat haunting and totally Michael Mann-ish
score (by former “Dead Can Dance” members, Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke) creates
the trademark original atmosphere that the director relies upon to make his films look
and sound both authentic and unique. Mann's longtime cinematographer Dante Spinotti, a
master at creating cityscapes (he shot 'Heat' and 'Speed', just to name a few) gives us the
New York of stressed out newsmen, hotels without care of cost and journalists rushing to
find coffee before they morph into "ordinary". He stretches rectangles of pure eye candy
out of everyday board rooms, pulls a greyish aqua out of dusk in the Bahamas (a truly
beautiful setpiece) and even creates in the form of television news shows, with long, slow
motion shots of characters, building music over them - this is a production steeped in
mimicry of it’s subject. What a brilliant concept.

 Mann, exercising his usual meandering image juxtaposition, creates a tapestry of
a film. I'd like to see the opening shot of each scene mounted on a wall. (The official
website opens with about 6-7 scenes, dictating their sluglines (INT. JAPANESE
RESTAURANT-DAY) and bursting the soundtrack into our worlds.) That's the film. It's a
collection of settings, a collection of conversations - it's a lavish production of real life
told in a series of landscapes that add up to a whole, but are only real in their separate
contexts. It’s an epic that works in it’s moments, but cries out to be stared at as a whole.
It’s an engaging and fiery film, highly resembling the visual and musical surrealism of
Mann’s last film, 'Heat'. Michael Mann is a poet, a painter and a genius. When watching
his film, we’re transformed into an oblivion of sight and sound, high-intensity acting and
polished and literary writing. 'The Insider' is an amazing ensemble piece, a wild document
of our world and a savagely enticing thriller.

Mann is fast becoming picking up where master Stanley Kubrick left off, grabbing us in his camera trance and not letting go. I think that comparison says it all.
 

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