THE INSIDER (Touchstone) Starring: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Philip Baker Hall, Diane Venora. Screenplay: Eric Roth and Michael Mann, based on the article "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by Marie Brenner. Producers: Michael Mann and Pieter Jan Brugge. Director: Michael Mann. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 155 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
As a storyteller, Michael Mann was born at least 200 years too late. In another place and time, he would have crafted operas -- grand-scale tales of human conflict blown up several times larger than life, accompanied by choruses and crescendos. Neither the subject matter nor the genre alters Mann's sense of the theatrical. The gothic horror of THE KEEP, the cop/crook conflict of HEAT, the historical drama of THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS -- all were treated as Very Important Films, sometimes through sprawling running times, sometimes through lingering slow-motion images. Mann's brand of operatic cinema has never quite been my cup of tea, and I was even more skeptical when I knew he had gotten his hands on material like THE INSIDER. This was, after all, a story about undeniably important issues: the insidious influence of corporate consolidation; journalistic ethics; the weighty responsibility of challenging the Powers That Be. Could Mann resist creating a film that would collapse under the weight of its self-imposed significance?
He could, and he did, though THE INSIDER is a much better personal story than it is a sweeping indictment of journalism-as-big-business. Russell Crowe stars as Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, who has just been fired from his job as director of research for the Brown & Williamson tobacco company when the film opens. Looking for a little extra cash -- and perhaps a small measure of payback -- Wigand agrees to act as a consultant when "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) comes to him with documents obtained from Phillip Morris. Wigand has no intention of revealing any of his own secrets until anonymous threats and harassment inspire him to blow the whistle on tobacco industry manipulation of nicotine. Bergman is ready to go public with Wigand's story, until the threat of litigation from Brown & Williamson throws the future of the story into question. As Wigand attempts to pick up the pieces of his life, Bergman attempts to pick up the pieces of "60 Minutes'" compromised integrity.
The details of CBS' ignominious corporate cave-in are already fairly well-known: Allegedly afraid of how the spectre of litigation would affect a proposed sale of the network to Westinghouse, network executives ordered Wigand's on-air interview shelved. The story of how Wigand's life was forever changed is considerably less well-known. Mann and co-screenwriter Eric Roth paint Wigand as nobody's idea of a hero, a contentious occasionally-heavy drinker whose manner does little to challenge Brown & Williamson's description of him as possessing "poor communication skills." Russell Crowe transforms himself physically into the pale, doughy scientist, never shying away from Wigand's darker side. Ironically, that pig-headed side of Wigand is shown to be the reason he persists even when Brown & williamson starts playing the hardest hardball. It's also the side that makes THE INSIDER most compelling -- and most unnerving -- as B&W begins digging up every possible speck of dirt from Wigand's past to discredit him. It's a notion only a half-step removed from the tragic state of our political process -- the discouraging idea no sane man would open his entire history, warts and all, to public scrutiny.
As long as THE INSIDER sticks close to Wigand's story and the ever-mounting repercussions for his actions, it's pretty strong stuff. In the second half of the film, however, CBS corporate politics begin to take over the narrative. Bergman confronts Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) and executive producer Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall) over their willingness to accept the dictates of the corporate big-wigs; he works in the background to expose the cover-up of Wigand's interview. Paper chase storytelling is tough to pull off, and Mann does a more than serviceable job of finding drama in ethical debate. It's just that once again he's in Opera Man mode, giving Pacino a stage for railing with righteous indignation (a scenario that never does Pacino any favors). The subject is interesting, but it is not about the deathknell of the free press. Mann has trouble recognizing when a film isn't about earth-shaking consequences.
He also has trouble recognizing when enough is enough. At more than two and a half hours, THE INSIDER starts to drag, and feels particularly out-of-control when Mann drags in the Unabomber story near the conclusion. Granted, he finds time in those two and a half hours for some dynamic individual scenes, including Bruce McGill's magnificent tirade as a Mississippi prosecutor staring down a smirking Brown & Williamson attorney. Mann does know how to make a moment of truth crackle; he knows how to create compelling human stories. He doesn't always know when enough is enough -- when that next shot of someone walking in super slow-mo will feel overly pretentious, or when that wailing chorus will begin to grate on the nerves. Eventually, even after plenty of solid filmmaking, you're just ready for that fat lady to hurry up and sing already.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 opera puffas: 7.
Visit Scott Renshaw's Screening Room http://www.inconnect.com/~renshaw/ *** Subscribe to receive new reviews directly by email! See the Screening Room for details, or reply to this message with subject "Subscribe".
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews