The Insider | | Cast : | Al Pacino, Russell Crowe | | Director : | Michael Mann | | Studio : | Walt Disney Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | November 05, 1999 | | DVD Released Date : | June 01, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 10, 2005 | | Summary | Through A Cold Inferno | Content
 | For a fundamentally misleading work, Michael Mann's The Insider is striking, sometimes searing experience. Sitting engulfed in the cold inferno that propels the narrative is never less than compelling. When it came out I was gladdened by the almost universally positive notices it garnered. But I was also left with a sense of unease. The Insider was being praised for all the wrong reasons; as an expose of Big Tobacco, a critique of corporate malfeasance, commentary on the conflict of a profit motivated media. Mann's picture poses as tract on all of the above and emerges an unremarkable pamphlet. That's a shame. Film criticism completes a film, explores it, engages it in a dialectic; only at its lowest level is it a score card to guide the masses to the multiplexes. The dumb approval of Mann's melancholy aria was something like a dismissal.
If anything Mann is soft on his primary target, CBS news. American mass media is a grotesque monster; a mechanized beast peddling sellable bigotry because the persistent anxiety that generates grabs more attention and keeps more people "tuned in". It, or rather they, do this with an audacity that somehow never finds inches or air time for simple facts that disrupt the noisy harangues they sell as news. The Insider accepts the sanctimonious blowhards of 60 minutes as people with ideals of integrity who are well outside this culture and are only temporarily compromised by corporate pressure. This is not a "media expose".
As for Big Tobacco, well, taking them on in the court of public opinion is not a brave choice (as opposed taking them on legally which, as evinced here, can be quite hazardous). Besides, it is doubtful that the urbane and intense author of Heat and Thief has suddenly decided to dedicate his work to the already effective efforts of the moralistic nanny state, majority alliance for healthful coercion.
Once the fog of "issues" is cleared, The Insider becomes the film implied by its individual properties; the metallic cinematography, Lisa Gerrard's longing, desolate vocals on the soundtrack, the intense medium close-ups of the etched expressions of the middle-aged actors. The characters had been alive before the events of the film's narrative, and the accumulated weight of years of anxious compromise are immediately visible in the domestic scenes which blend the voyeuristic familiarity of the popular handheld technique with icy color tones held for long takes. These scenes are punctuated with scant, hesitant dialogue. The camera's intrusiveness finds only silence and loneliness.
The film is far more pessimistic than is apparent on its superficial "issue" level. It gets mileage out of the Al Pacino's former radical turned honest professional. But consider the character closely and you'll find that his triumph comes only after he accepts his own helplessness in the larger scheme of things. When he's told that towards the end that he won, he agrees only to add, "What did I win?" It's as if the elaborate machinations of the case, the entire elaborate narrative have been helpfully concealing a great dread that must be faced once those events resolve themselves, be that with success of failure. This dread is even more evident in the Crowe character, whose life, pictured briefly before the media storm at the center of this narrative, is a bourgeois existence drained of joy or purpose. One should not forget that is he who sets these events in motion as a "man of science" who took the money, the car, and the benefits. The fact that he sold out to the tobacco industry rather than a more neutral but equally anonymous corporate colossus is significant, but ultimately secondary.
That this is a better film at the character level than at the grand level of political discourse should come as no surprise. The dissection of The Insider binds it to another of Michael Mann's films, 1995's Heat. Indeed the qualities that make The Insider a good film are the same ones that made Heat a great one. The characters in both films are engaged in complex plans to change their quietly painful solitude only to find themselves bound to it, as much by their inability to communicate as by the inert urban wastelands that surrounds them.
Transplanting the theme of existential loneliness from a crime picture to a legal one could have intensified audience identification with the characters; instead it allowed some of the empathy to be channeled into worthy abstractions about big tobacco and the press. This is not an argument against the "issue" picture; it's just that Mann's films are that much more powerful when the sum of the parts is not determined beforehand (notice the odd outcome of his Ali biopic where he was tied down by biographical baggage). The picture does arouse great sympathy for the Crowe character caught in a frightening, corporately guided bureaucracy that makes this almost the humane version of Kafka's The Trial. Like Kafka, Mann seems to be, in this age of post-modern artistic cowardice, a modernist looking for a perspective of the urban system he sketches. Unlike Kafka (or Kubrick, who should have filmed Kafka) Mann's is not detached enough to make the grand issue picture. As this fine film demonstrates, and as Heat did so well before it, Mann's urban wasteland retains a humanity that is conspicuous by its absence within the frame. But it is always palpable, threatening to burst into violence.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 01, 2005 | | Summary | My review 'Re-Issued' | Content
| Okay, so I'm trying to be helpful here, and I guess my origional review was not. I can't help it that to me this movie is just a Russell Crowe showcase, but I guess I should elaborate a little better.
This is my origional review for all of you curious:
I've been a huge Russell Crowe fan since seeing Gladiator and I've made it a point ot see all of his movies. I just can't believe I waited this long to see The Insider. This is easily one of my favorites. Just wonderfully done, Russell conveys emotion that most actors are unable to do (with the exception of a few)...Russell is very much my favorite actor, and all predudice aside I believe he is the greatest actor of our generation, and I'm sure many to come. This movie was perfectly put together, every element was perfectly placed. It is well deserving of praise. I'm not a big Pucino fan, but he pulled out the stops here. Awsome performance Al, but the show stealer is once again Mr. Crowe. Great work Russell...can't wait for your next ride.
Now THIS is my new review:
First off, I love movies based on true life stories. It gives you a chance to see what happens to real people as aposed to fictional charactors. So our REAL life story here is based on Jeff Wigand (Crowe) who once worked for Bronson & Bronson (If I remember correctly, I may be off a bit) a big tobacco company. He is wrongfully fired for not seeing eye to eye with the production department. Upon being fired Wigand is contacted by 60 Minutes (namely by Pucino) who wants him to pretty much rat out big tobacco. The problem is Wigand sign a confidentiality agreement with his former company and if you renigs they will take away severence package including his health benifits, and he can't lose that for he has an asmatic daughter. The movie revolves around the struggle of morality. Do you make the moraly correct choice even if it means you lose everything you have, your home, your job, your family or do you keep quiet and save face? My wife thought the movie was slow and boring, but not I...I loved the movie and thought it carried an extremly powerful message.
PS> Russell was amazing as usual! |
| Rating | | | Date | May 25, 2005 | | Summary | Very Under-Rated Film | Content
| I Don't know why i let 5 years pass before i sat down, and watched this film - probably b/c im not the biggest russell crowe fan, w/ that said ,i thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of this movie. From the beautiful cinemetography to the wonderful score, capped off by the excellent acting (pacino,plummer,crowe - in that order) one couldn't ask for more. The "taking on big corporations" premise is rarely touched upon by members in hollywood, or if it is - it's very watered down. This film is a social commentary - it dissects how corrupt and to what length corporations will go to get their way. This movie is so deep , and for the thinkers of the world only. Kudos to Mann, w/ each film i watch made by him - the bigger fan i become. Please don't pass this one up. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 19, 2005 | | Summary | GREAT docudrama | Content
| I had come to expect good things from Michael Mann after seeing "Heat" and "Collatoral", and had heard that "The Insider" was also worth watching. I heard right as it is now my favorite film from Mann, the story is based on fact about one man who dared to go against the tobacoo company and lost everything because of it. One of the films many strengths are the superb performances by Crowe and Pacino(Duh), they seem as though they could be the actual people who went through the ordeals of all this. Half docudrama half psychological thriller this is a fantastic film not to be missed! My rating 9.5/10. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 11, 2005 | | Summary | Great direction and acting elevate this smokey story | Content
| Quick camera movements and hushed dialog heighten the claustrophobia and paranoia faced by Russel Crowe, the putative hero of "The Insider". When the story starts, Wigand is a well-paid research scientist for a cigarette manufacturer. Wigand's manicured home, family and life mirror his life, but when the flick opens, we have the sense that it's already over for him. He's clearly had enough of the cigarette industry, 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. 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 attempts to make cigarettes more addictive.
Unfortunately, Wigand's attempts to expose his former employers - through both legal action and through an expose on "60 Minutes" runs into obstruction by the industry. Losing his severance package and soon his pretty family, Wigand's life is soon 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 does "Big Tobacco" 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. There's a huge moral dilemma that never makes it to the story.
For all its murkiness, the film remains evocative and irresistible - 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. Much of the dialog sounds like a collection of newspaper blurbs, but the story's focus and some unforgettable acting make the insider a story you just can't get yourself out of. |
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