The Insider

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The Insider

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The Insider

Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer, Philip Baker Hall, Russell Crowe, Diane Venora, Lindsay Crouse

On the edge of exposing one of the decade's most incendiary public health issues, "60 Minutes" television producer Lowell Bergman must convince former tobacco industry insider Dr. Jeffrey Wigand to re...( read more  read more... )veal the truth about the practices of cigarette companies, although the consequences to his career and family may be ruinous.

Id: 10858325

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The Insider Recent Reviews
  • SirPant
    September 23, 2009
    SirPant
    A powerful and important film, beautifully shot!
  • AgentLexi2132
    February 23, 2009
    AgentLexi2132
    "I told the truth."

    A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a "60 Minutes" expose on Big Tobacco.

    Al Pacino: Lowell Bergman

    Against this backdrop director Michael Mann gives us The Insider, a film every bit th...( read more)e equal in seriousness to All the President's Men. Russell Crowe plays Tobacco Executive Jeffrey Wigand. Al Pacino is Sixty Minutes Producer Lowell Bergman. Wigand has just been fired from his $300,000 a year job. Bergman wants help deciphering a tobacco industry document. The two of them start an uneasy relationship. The film suggests Wigand's employer began spooking his family before the executive agreed to become a whistleblower for Sixty Minutes. I doubt the truth there.

    Soon the two men are developing the story. The Mississippi Attorney General's office wants Wigand to testify. Reporter Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) is brought in to interview Wigand. Executive Producer Don Hewit (Anthony Michael Hall) is brought on board. Brown & Williamson gets wind of Wigand's betrayal. Bergman says it wasn't him who tipped B&W. Wigand begins a new job as a high school science teacher. Brown and Williamson assigns detectives to follow him and make trouble for Wigand's family. The Tobacco giant plants anti-Wigand stories in other Press outlets in anticipation of the Sixty Minutes bombshell. Wigand's wife and daughter leave him. He loses his home and the wife divorces him.

    The story keeps developing and the pressure builds. But the biggest problem is inside CBS itself. CBS Legal learns that Wigand has a contract with Brown & Williamson that provides for serious financial penalties if Wigand reveals ANY of its secrets, and CBS is liable too. All of a sudden the story is threatening the financial interests of the Network itself. Wallace and Hewitt agree to back off. Bergman is livid. He says CBS owner-CEO Laurence Tisch is betraying the news division because he is afraid a major liability suit will queer plans he has to sell the network to Westinghouse. Left out of the script is the news that the Tisch family owned Loews controls Lorillard, another of the seven giant tobacco companies in America. Even director Michael Mann had to make some concessions. He must have bargained away this embarassing little detail when making his own deal with CBS over what would appear in the script.

    Bergman has to tell Wigand the story has been squelched. After all he has had to put up with, Wigand is more than disappointed. Bergman begins leaking CBS' betrayal of the news division to other press outlets. Wallace is now angry that his own part in the coverup has been revealed. He and Bergman quarrel. The Producer is furloughed for a week by Hewitt. But CBS News has a black eye that would make Edward R. Murrow roll over in his grave. Wallace has a brilliant public relations ploy. Lets go over to Black Rock (CBS Corporate) and sell them a package that will save all our reputations. I won't tell you what the deal is though you can probably make a good guess.

    The film is two hours and 37 minutes long. It doesn't drag but its a very long sit for a film audience that is mostly under 30 and more interested in special effects than public affairs. In 1976 the film would have been hailed as something like the Second Coming. Today, a film like this is released with almost no fanfare. Its only hope is to capture enough awards to alert the mostly 35 and older audience that has abandoned filmgoing, at least in theatres. Two years ago, Crowe made a boffo debut in a wonderful film called LA Confidential that was soundly trounced at the Awards by the Carnivorous, youth-oriented Titanic. And Crowe, whose performance is tempered in this role, is one of the greatest screen actors to hit these shores since Marlon Brando, James Dean, George C. Scott and Tony Hopkins. Because he still insists on acting at a time when appearing in monster special effects packages is the key to success.., because of this, Crowe's success as a film actor is still not a cinch.

    There are other actors in this film that are wasted. Any film that would use Rip Torn as little as this one does, deserves a slap. Torn plays PR man John Scanlon, but he barely speaks a sentence. British actor Michael Gambon plays a high executive at B&W. His screentime is minimal. And Mann repeats a video clip of Gambon repeatedly. The guy who lit a welding torch to reshape the Otter's Uncle's Lincoln in Animal House 21 years ago is wonderful as one of the courtroom lawyers from Mississippi. Wings Hauser, the aptly named and wonderfully over -the-top B-movie actor who usually is larger than Richard Simmons onscreen, is subdued here as a B&W lawyer at a Mississippi court hearing. Speaking of subdued, the most interesting performance is Christopher Plummer's subtle underplaying of Mike Wallace. Plummer's Wallace almost seems to be subordinate to producer Bergman. I wonder if Wallace is really this quiet around his colleagues at the network. The Plummer portrayal is in savage contrast to the Mike Wallace we are used to on-air. Plummer makes no attempt to imitate the on-air Wallace. His delivery is sufficiently newsman-like, but it is not the hard-hitting TV character we are used to. Gina Gershon is sharp and sharklike playing the CBS Lawyer who deflates the team's hopes of putting the story on the air. And former New York Post Editor and columnist Pete Hamil plays a reporter-editor at the New York Times, one of the few Gotham publications he has not worked for.

    I wasn't crazy about this film, but in a debased American Cinema, the Insider stands out just because it is directed to an adult sensibility. There are many adults who will not enjoy this film. Its been a long time since Watergate. Not everyone is interested anymore.
    All in all this is a true masterpiece. Intellectual (which is rare in a film today), gripping, and truly mesmerizing in every sense of the meaning. This is by far among Mann's best work to date and if he churns out more treasures like this I will remain a fan forever.
  • thmtsang
    January 5, 2009
    thmtsang
    Al is a TV producer looking to expose the practices of the tobacco industry. Russell is the whistle blower who puts his life and family on the line to reveal the truth. Excellent performances. Intense.
  • QueenCityFilms
    January 3, 2009
    QueenCityFilms
    See this film immediately...one of Mann's finest.
  • mrpopcorn
    January 1, 2009
    mrpopcorn
    "Warning: Exposing the Truth May Be Hazardous"

    The Insider tells the true story of a man who decided to tell the world what the seven major tobacco companies knew (and concealed) about the dangers of their product. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) was a scientist employed...( read more) in research for a tobacco firm, Brown and Williamson. Not long after he was fired by Brown and Williamson, Wigand came into contact with Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), a producer for 60 Minutes who worked closely with journalist Mike Wallace (played here by Christopher Plummer). Bergman arranged for Wigand to be interviewed by Wallace for a 60 Minutes expose on the cigarette industry, though Wigand was still bound by a confidentiality agreement not to discuss his employment with the company. Despite Wigand's willingness to talk, CBS pulled his interview from at the last minute after Brown and Williamson threatened a multi-billion dollar lawsuit. The staff of 60 Minutes and CBS News were soon embroiled in an internal struggle over the killing of the story, and Wigand found himself the subject of lawsuits and a smear campaign, without his full story reaching the public.

    Review
    It is a rare pleasure to witness on screen a film which not only is enjoyable to watch but will also leave you with a sense of darkness, sorrow and regret. Strong dialogue and even stronger emotions are displayed by Al Pacino's "live on the edge" character Lowell Bergman and Russell Crowe's whistle-blowing Jeffrey Wigand will leave you saddened and hooked whilst the remainder of the cast give the performances of their lives. It's a tale of truth which slowly emerges whilst a character's faith quickly falls. A true masterpiece if ever there was one.
  • Ivan6655321
    November 21, 2009
    Ivan6655321
    Explosive, Exhausting, dramatic thriller. All of this successfully done without even a single action sequence. The tandem of Pacino-Crowe was perfect, contrasting each other's performances with both loudness and subtlety. Aside from the controversial subject matter, the main powe...( read more)r of "The Insider" is its well-crafted script. Michael Mann, with his directorial ingenuity, has able to inject an aesthetically pleasing blue palette to the locations, same as his earlier action film, "Heat". The only little problem of the film is its one-sidedness, treating the Tobacco industry as a one-dimensional corporate villain.
  • hossein13
    November 17, 2009
    hossein13
    November 2009 - Interesting but a bit long. I think the most important facto for the movies success was that it was based on a true story and real well known characters otherwise I am not sure if it would get the same ratings.
  • odonoghuematthew
    November 13, 2009
    odonoghuematthew
    Best Supporting actor 1999
  • ichisp
    November 5, 2009
    ichisp
    Acting passion like no other. Freaking amazing!
  • xtiandurden
    October 27, 2009
    xtiandurden
    A superb thriller. Crowe brought us his brilliant performance in this film and of course Pacino obviously would heat up the screens again, both actors are in the top of their game. From the director of a crime-action thriller "Heat," Michael Mann collaborated with Pacino and dire...( read more)cted this Best Picture contender drama-thriller. The photography is much more impressive, and I think Michael Mann improved his style. This will give you everything you need to see in a thriller.
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