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The
Insider
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Release
Date: March 3rd 1999
Distributor: Buena Vista
Certificate: 15
Starring: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe,
Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse
Director: Michael
Mann
Running Time:
155 mins
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I love
a good conspiracy movie. We all love 'em. From the seminal true story "All
The President's Men" (1976), through Oliver Stones interpretation of
the facts in the magnificent "JFK" (1991) , right up to purely
fictional but engrossing films like "Enemy Of The State"(1998)
they all have the capacity to enthrall but also to make us question the
full manipulative might of those in power. So what makes "The Insider"
so much better than most of those that have gone before and maybe are as
yet still to come. Easy…everything
In 1995 "The New York Times" broke a story that the massively
popular and multi-award winning CBS newsmagazine "60 Minutes"
had pulled an item about the unscrupulous behaviour of the third largest
tobacco company in the U.S, Brown and Williamson. The company's lawyers
had threatened to sue the news programme, which, it was revealed would have
jeopardized a proposed CBS merger with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation,
from which several high-ranking CBS corporate officers would have profited. |
That
is the history of the story, from which Michael Mann ("Heat")
has directed a fictionalized account of the events leading up to the executive
decision at CBS to withdraw the article, a decision that has tarnished the
programme's name forever.
The film itself starts two years earlier in 1993 when the man who actually
tried to help blow the case wide open, tobacco-executive Jeffrey Wigand
(played by Russell Crowe) is fired from his position as Vice-President Of
Research at Brown and Williamson and then a year later is hired by "60
Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) to interpret some information
on a "fire safe" cigarette research programme. Wigand holds some
pretty damning information on the cigarette company's inside-knowledge that
not only is nicotine highly addictive but they may have found a way to make
it even more-so. Bergman knows that he knows and through a loophole in the
U.S judicial system finds a way of circumventing the confidentiality agreement
that Wigand had signed with his former employers in order to get a television
interview with veteran reporter Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). |
| Whatever
the authenticity of all the events and dialogue portrayed in this movie
it is never-the-less a shocking and damning indictment of the corrupt and
morally twisted nature of corporate America. Crowe's performance is outstanding
and deeply moving as a man caught between the need to confess the sins of
a world of disinformation in which he has played such a major part and the
constant struggle to stay sane in his own world where paranoia, death-threats,
prison and the break-up of his marriage are only a few of the demons threatening
to tear him apart. Whether Wigand's motives are purely mercenary or humanitarian
or both becomes irrelevant as we become more involved in his emotional upheaval,
an indication of not only the acting depths and prowess of Crowe but also
the strength of the script and the art of Mann's directorial skills. |
As we
move into the second half of the movie it is the Pacino character who takes
centre-stage as he tries to get CBS to air the programme in the ranting,
beliose style that has become his trademark over the past couple of decades.
His is one of the pivotal performances around which the central plot of
power, greed and intimidation takes place and one would be hard pressed
to have found another such capable actor who could have carried off the
role with such aplomb and credibility. A fine supporting cast which includes
a very solid Diana Venora who plays Wigand's wife and the impressive Christopher
Plummer pulling a very passable impersonation of Mike Wallace add weighty
compexity to the whole proceedings and with this being only Mann's 6th movie(
the last being the formidable "Heat") it makes one wonder what
gems are still to come.
Easily one of the highlights of the 1999/2000 year.
DARRELL FINN |
