THE INSIDER ***½ (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers (bill@filmfreakcentral.net)
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starring Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora screenplay by Eric Roth and Michael Mann, based on the article "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by Marie Brenner directed by Michael Mann
"60 Minutes" segment producer Lowell Bergman (Pacino) has contacted Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) hoping he'll be able to interpret an innocuous book of scientific data on the fire hazzards of smoking. Wigand, a chemist who was recently sent packing by cigarette manufacturer Brown & Williamson, incorrectly presumes from Bergman's call that a newshound is after him to break a confidentiality agreement he signed as part of a severance package. Wigand promptly faxes a message back that reads "Can't talk. Won't talk. Don't want to."
Director Michael Mann's nervous camera seems to stop dead when Bergman realizes that his would-be interpretor has let some sort of cat out of the bag. Pacino doesn't overemphasize the moment-a satisfied grin flits across his face and then he's back in business mode. (After all, Bergman at this point is a detective without a mystery.) They first worked together on Heat, Pacino and Mann, and they make a great team. Mann leaves Pacino's visage only out of necessity, and in return, Pacino always gives us something to look at.
The brilliant Crowe extends Mann the same courtesy. Jeffrey Wigand is introduced to us as a husband and loving father of few words. (B&W officially dismissed him for poor communication skills.) But a disgruntled nerd lurks beneath the surface, a man prone to hard drinking and violent outbursts. Crowe doesn't call attention to any shift in personality-when Jeffrey's rage first reveals itself to us, during a meeting with his former superiors, it's as if we, not Crowe, were the ones initially repressing Wigand's dark side. And though he changed his hair and diet to play the gray, pudgy doctor, Crowe (hulky Bud White of L.A. Confidential) is an unavoidably imposing physical presence, which adds another layer of tension to his scenes with Pacino-volatile Wigand could mop the floor with Bergman.
Wigand and Bergman team up when B&W's unwarranted pressure tactics drive the former to blow the whistle. (They've seen him talking to journalists; they assume the worst.) Countless threats of litigation and murder later, Wigand sits down for veteran TV personality Mike Wallace and discloses the cold hard truth: that he had been hired to make "nicotine delivery devices" more addictive. Their interview is a powerful sequence, one of many.
Before the piece on corruption in the tobacco industry has aired, CBS attorneys advise the "60 Minutes" crew to edit out Wigand's contribution. As a third party exposing Jeffrey's secrets-breaking the confidentiality agreement on his behalf-they face a lawsuit so great that ‘Big Tobacoo' (the seven biggies of the industry) could wind up owning the network. For the first time in the show's history, or at least in Lowell's fourteen year history with the show, senior producer Don Hewitt (Phillip Baker Hall) backs down from a fight, and Wallace joins him-he's too old and tired to stay perched on the soapbox. This plot point is the real Mike Wallace's point of contention with The Insider, a docudrama: he fears the film portrays him as spineless. It does, but it might also be true.
Bergman, on the other hand, comes off as that rare media species who glows with integrity. He's as concerned about his new friend Jeffrey's personal sacrifice going unrewarded as he is the story's impact being softened. (An altered version will simply warn the public that cigarettes are bad for you-not exactly the sort of groundbreaking item that brought "60 Minutes" to fame.) If Lowell is too saintly, in the end, at least Pacino makes quiet confidence and old-fashioned values as compelling as those traits that win Oscars: brooding, anger, remorse, the fidgets-Jeffrey's qualities. Though both actors are award-worthy, I suspect that Crowe's performance will be the one to capture the Academy's imagination if any of The Insider's do.
Mann has become a less rigid filmmaker over the years. As co-creator of "Miami Vice", he practically pioneered the pastels and art deco aesthetic of the mid-eighties; back then, his shooting style was often as sterile as his set design. The tide turned with The Last of the Mohicans-we were no longer voyeurs, we were participants thrown into battle and swept up in period romance. 1995's Heat, in which his characters slam "dead-tech post-modern bullshit" architecture, confirmed that Mann had evolved (no pun intended) into a more elaborate visualist. (His love of synth music has remained intact over the years, God bless him: ex-Dead Can Dance frontwoman Lisa Gerrard and synthesist Pieter Bourke provide The Insider with a dreamy, emotionally satisfying score.)
The Insider's cinematography, by Dante Spinotti, is beautifully gritty and experimental-one memorable shot follows Crowe so closely that his head threatens to knock the lens. Several unfocused reaction takes feel as if they were captured on the fly. Perhaps and Mann and his team were inspired by the work of Wong Kar-Wei (whose freeform Chungking Express The Insider often resembles in visual terms) or Dogma 95 (the ideal co-developed by Breaking the Waves' director Lars Von Trier that prohibits the use of unnatural lighting, Steadicams, and the like). Whatever the case, the film bears the most issue-oriented screenplay Mann's worked from yet; had he Hollywood-ed up the presentation, it might have enhanced the story's preachiness for the worse.
At last, the importance of Dr. Wigand's ballsy confession has been acknowledged; The Insider is great moviemaking.
-November, 1999
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