Insider, The (1999)

reviewed by
Jeremiah McVay


Director: Michael Mann
Screenwriter: Eric Wroth
based on the Vanity Fair article,
"The Man Who Knew Too Much," by Marie Brenner
Country: USA; Year: 1999
Rating (4 star system): ***

This is a hulking mass of a movie. There's just a lot of story, and, unfortunately, it's not all necessary.

The Insider is fragmented into two main sections, one focusing on Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe)-- tobacco industry whistle blower, and the other on Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino)-- 60 Minutes producer. Crowe does a decent job of apparently impersonating the real life Wigand (as said by Wigand himself), but imnpersonation is not always the best route. Of course, I knew from the beginning that Wigand would eventually decide to speak out against the industry, but since this was a given, his struggle to do so should have been more enthralling. There were threats to his character and his family, but I can't say they ever convinced me that Wigand ever actually thought about not blowing the whistle-- it seemed like he was set from the beginning, no matter how much he tried to act otherwise. This apathy probably came from the character seeming rather flat. I never felt like I really knew him-- especially the way I felt I began to know Pacino's character, Bergman.

Bergman may seem like a bit of a cliché-- the man of journalistic integrity, but a cliché played by Pacino usually find added depth. Pacino did a good job of portraying his character, which made it easier to relate to Bergman, so perhaps the entire movie should have been slanted more to his position, rather than spending so much, or any, time in Wigand's position at all. It surely would have have helped to focus the story as a whole.

The film probably would have been better if it simply kept up it's theme of upholding journalistic integrity, and simply used the tobacco issue as a springboard for that, rather than delving so much into the tobacco industry itself. As it stands, the film does lean more to this, but it's simply not enough. It becomes bogged down in trying to create unnecessary and distracting tension around Wigand when, instead, it would be all the better to focus on him almost completely from Bergman's position or point of view [speaking of unnecessary, I'm not sure I'll ever really figure out what that whole bit about the Uni-bomber was meant to accomplish].

I loved Mann's last feature, Heat- it was far from perfect, but it was an interesting and involving film, in my opinion. Of course, I think it was easy to like it because it was really quite simplistic-- it was the involvement that made the simplicity seem to be more than it was. It seems as if, with this film, Mann wanted to show that he can make a serious film about important issues. While I think that this film does prove he can do such a thing, I wouldn't yet say he's been entirely successful. I'll hazard a guess that he probably worked a little too closely with the editor, and that's why there's so much material in the final product. It's easy to lose objectivity in such a situation. Of course, I have no idea if that's what actually happened...

Perhaps the real fault lies in the writing. The story is just too unfocused, as I've said. Now that I think about it, what I saw seems as if they shot a draft of the screenplay that should have been revised two or three more times. What this means is that there is a good film on the screen, but not alone. It's there with extra, unnecessary material. -- TyroneZero's Movies, etc. http://members.tripod.com/~TyroneZero/film.html

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