Customer Reviews

Insider, the

5 star:		(147)
4 star:		(50)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This is the true story of Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a man who signed a confidentiality agreement before getting fired from a big tobacco company. Hotshot *60 minutes* producer Bergman (Al Pacino) asks Wigand to decipher some technical documents, and soon realizes there's a bigger story hiding inside Wigand.
On top of that, Wigand is recruited to testity in Mississippi for a case that claims cigarettes *are* addictive.
The *60 minutes* piece will eventually be pulled because of corporate pressure. Wigand deals with his personal dilemma, and Bergman battles the corporation.
Both men will struggle against Big Tobacco's attempts to silence them and against the CBS television network's cowardly complict preference of putting money as a higher priority over the truth.

True colors of journalism are shown throughout the film. Director Michael Mann has done a great job portraying journalistic realism. The actors are marvelous, no exception.

An emotionally intense drama which reveals the consequences of standing up for the truth.

If you want to stop smoking, that's a movie you should see, it will help you a lot to quit that junk.

For the most part this movie is superbly acted and well filmed. Russell Crowe, one of the best things that ever happened to Australia, is perfectly cast as Jeffrey Wigand, the scientist whistle-blower who is fired from Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company. Christopher Plummer actually resembles the character he plays, Mike Wallace of CBS Sixty Minutes. Al Pacino should tone down his shouting performance a notch or two, however. The movie got all kinds of nominations for Oscar awards when it was released.

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.

Russel Crowe is Jeff Wigand, "The Insider", a research scientist for a cigarette manufacturer who goes up against his boss. When the flick opens, we see his well manicured family and his pretty life, but we have the sense that it's already over for him. He's clearly had enough of his employers, but knows he could lose a severance package negotiated to keep him silent about the workings of his ex-employer's marketing tactics. Al Pacino as Lowell Bergman, a producer for 60 Minutes proves, at about the same time, that he's not afraid to put his personal safety on the line for the story. Christopher Plummer is a surprisingly effective Mike Wallace, one of a small strike force of tele-journalists fearless in the face of intimidation from anybody. In the "Insider", they come together in a sort of manipulative morality tale about corporate greed and nicotine. Though there's no secret about the health risks of chain smoking, Wigand threatens to expose the industry's dark secret - that they actively design cigarettes to be more addictive. Unfortunately, Wigand's attempts to expose his former employers - through both legal action and through an expose on "60 Minutes" make him a target. Losing his severance package and soon his pretty family, Wigand's life is turned upside down. On Bergman's end, his efforts to air Wigand's expose are morphed from a complex story involving well-meaning journalists rendered powerless by questionable law - into a simpler story of noble journalist Davids against the might of corporate Goliaths (the flick shamelessly touts "corporate" as if it were a profane word, as in "did CBS News cave in to CBS Corporate?"). Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt, who probably had no power to resist CBS's initial ban against the Wigand story, are now seen as craven corporate lackeys (Wallace, who is fearless in the face of an Hizbollah bigwig early in the movie, cowers at the thought that he may be reduced to doing NPR if he disobeys orders). Played by Pacino, Bergman is the hero here (the script seems to credit him for leaking the banned story to the print media, even though WSJ is credited with doing it themselves), while Wigand is well meaning to the point of martyrdom.

Unfortunately, this account of dirty tricks and cigarette makers is undone by its own murky paranoia - just how do these menacing guys manage to hold onto their political power the way nicotine holds onto smokers? Least convincing is speed with which the editorial staff at "60 Minutes" caves into corporate pressure to dump the story. It's never really explained how guys who regularly face-off against government bureaucrats, corporate honchos and terrorist leaders in the darkest corners of the new century crumble like a house of cards before big tobacco. The film, by never explaining the stranglehold of the cigarette industry implicitly supports them - that the "big" in big-tobacco is a myth created by the self-righteous of the media and government to explain their own inability to deal with America's nicotine problems.

For all its murkiness, the film remains evocative, a collection of great scenes, like Crowe's epiphany in a hotel room, and Pacino's giving a hotel attendant long-distance instruction in the art of talking like Al Pacino. Remember this as the movie in which TV action fixture Wings Hauser played a lawyer for the tobacco industry.

I enjoyed this telling of the whistle blower story. However there are sentimentalities in it and pieces of illogic thrown in for effect. These eventually tire me out.

Product arrived in excellent shape and the quality of the DVD was very sharp. Very satisfied.

We all know that it's sometimes worth it to take a second look at a film you may have been dismissive of before. To say, I didn't "get" THE INSIDER the first time I saw it would be something of an understatement. I didn't see it as all that revelatory--"'Big tobacco' corrupt?" "Big media craven?" "Mike Wallace has an ego and a temper on the scale of Mt. St. Helens?" Quelle surprise! There was nothing particularly new about all that. In fact, the only big news was that Russell Crowe was going the DeNiro route and altering his physical appearance for the sake of his art. (OK, OK, not as extreme but he did put on a few pounds and donned a less than flattering grey toupe.)

Maybe it was something I ate that first time, though, 'cause the second time around, I have to admit, it was pretty riveting. This time out, I found the moral dilemmas facing Crowe's whistleblower and Pacino's muckraker TV producer pretty darn fascinating--despite the fact that I knew how it was all going to turn out. Oh yeah, and I finally got the fact that the title is supposed to be a little ambiguous and that,yes, Pacino's Lowell Bergman character is an "insider" too.

Sometimes I'm a little slow, but eventually, if I'm lucky, I catch on. THE INSIDER is a quietly powerful and effective film. Apparently, it didn't manage to convince Russell Crowe to quit smoking, but--as a morality tale and as sheer drama--it's still pretty darn effective.

Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse, Debi Mazar.
Running Time: 158 minutes.
Rated R for language and some violence.

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.

Full of portentious music and camera angles, The Insider plays like a story that is about to reveal a mystical, transforming truth, or at least something shocking. But that's the problem. The movie isn't about a network news show cow-towing to financial pressures. Sure, that story is here, but it never becomes the major focus of the film. And the movie isn't about one man and his crisis of conscience or character. Again, we are shown the thin, superficial layers of this personal struggle, but not much more. Instead, the movie drills into, and focuses on relentlessly, the "secret" this "insider" wants to tell the world, but can't. And that point is driven home in so many different ways--as if Jeffrey Wygand (who I suppose is the main character) has something extraordinarily interesting and devastating to reveal, and that the world will change as a result of him going public.

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.

If there ever was a list of utterly absorbing films, this would be right up there. What a riveting piece of drama, from Lisa Gerrard's haunting score to the mesmerizing cinematography of Mike Mann in form.

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.