The Insider

Okay, this is the third Michael Mann movie review I’ve done since I started this blog, so I guess it kind of goes without saying that Mann is my favorite movie director. Many many folks, myself included, think that Heat is his ultimate masterpiece, though a good number of people will point to his 1999 film The Insider as the culmination of his talents as a filmmaker. With this movie, Mann steps back from his usual crime movies and gives us a sort of "docudrama", which I kind of liken to non-fiction told with various liberties taken.

The Insider tells the story of the first tobacco whistleblower in the early to mid '90s. Russell Crowe plays Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco executive who was recently let go by his company. The way it was presented in the film, Wigand was essentially fired for growing a conscience, and we’re led to believe that this made him something of a troublemaker internally, because he felt guilty for working for a company that manufactures and markets cancerous products. Al Pacino plays Lowell Bergman, a producer with "60 Minutes." He comes into contact with Wigand because he needs someone to translate into layman’s terms various documents he receives from another tobacco company, for a separate news story he’s putting out; basically, he needs Wigand for a consulting job. When they first meet (quite reluctantly on the part of Crowe’s Wigand, since it came on the heels of his dismissal), Pacino’s Bergman senses that Wigand has something weighing on his conscience, and slowly, gradually, a friendship builds between the two men—enough of a friendship that Wigand decides to clear his conscience and do an interview with "60 Minutes" about the risk of cigarettes and how big tobacco knowingly sells an addictive product.

Earlier, I called The Insider a docudrama, but having said that, it’s also a different kind of docudrama from the standard righteous-man-wins-the-day template. Here, yes, the righteous man does win the day—but at a very high price. Because Wigand, in blowing the whistle, is a man who stands to lose . . . and he does lose. He loses everything in his life by blowing the whistle on big tobacco. His wife leaves him and takes the children with her, the family receives multiple death threats, and Wigand himself must endure his whole life being splattered across the front pages and his character getting smeared from here to Mars. Crowe does a very telling scene where he’s dining out at a restaurant, about to dive into the biggest, tastiest-looking cheeseburger a man could eat . . . and then looks up to see himself on the news. As he watches the newscast and hears so many personal aspects of his life broadcast to millions over the airwaves, Crowe looks down in shame and humiliation, and pushes his dinner plate away from him, his appetite a thing of the past.

At the very end of the movie, he is a man who’s been reduced on so many levels, and is grateful just to be able to teach high school chemistry (even though he can still sleep at night with a clear conscience). But when the original "60 Minutes" interview finally does hit the air, and he’s serving dinner to his two young daughters while they watch it . . . the look that his oldest daughter gives him makes all the mudslinging and pain that he’s endured worthwhile, because he knows that, finally, he’s made a meaningful difference, and those closest to him understand the sacrifices he's had to make.

That entire scene is one of pure magic. The soundtrack played over the scene was perfect. The moments of everyone turning away from what they’re doing to look at the Wigand interview, the message that Wigand imparts to everyone hitting home with the viewers—a sense of completion settles down on us with this scene. Pacino’s Bergman is a man who has lost, too. Not to the degree that Wigand has, but Bergman has lost his credibility and his own sense of self as a newsman, which is why he leaves "60 Minutes" at the end of the movie.

I've heard it said that The Insider is essentially two movies at once, and I'd agree with that assessment. Basically you have the first half of the film as Russell Crowe searching his conscience over whether to blow the whistle on big tobacco. And the second half focuses on Al Pacino's efforts to get the Wigand interview to air, through all the legal hassle that's brought on by big tobacco as well as the internal strife within CBS.

I sometimes wonder if The Insider would have better served not as a theatrical motion picture but as a 5-hour TV mini-series. At 2 hours and 40 minutes, it still seems like things are crammed in and happening faster than we know why they’re happening. But despite the crammed storyline, The Insider is one hell of a well-made movie! I don’t doubt that Mann took some liberties for dramatic effect, but they sure worked. When Crowe’s Wigand opens up his mailbox to find a bullet standing upright inside, that genuinely gave me the shivers! My favorite scene is of the motorcade driving Wigand to the Mississippi courthouse, where the whole procession is silent except for the Spanish guitar music playing over the scene. That’s Michael Mann magic right there. Another moment of Michael Mann magic is when Wigand starts to break down in his hotel room, when the wall morphs into a vignette of his back yard with his daughters at play.

Moments of unbearable tension grow unexpectedly, too! There’s an early scene where Wigand is practicing at the driving range late at night, and he’s alone—except for the one man way down the line from him who keeps looking in his direction. And when Wigand’s daughter wakes him up in the night because she saw someone outside, and then he rushes her down into the basement and he goes outside, fully armed, ready to face whoever’s out there—that’s the most nail-biting scene of the whole movie. And I would also have to say that the scene of Crowe and Pacino inside the Japanese restaurant was somewhat akin to the diner scene from Heat. The Insider also features several cameos by real-life anti-tobacco politicians, and actor Bruce McGill (who I will always remember as D-Day from Animal House) shines in an amazing scene in a Mississippi courtroom.

This movie was up for several Oscars in 1999 (losing nearly all of them to the overrated and flat-out strange American Beauty), and let me go on record now by saying that this is the movie for which Russell Crowe should have won his Oscar—not for Gladiator. His physical transformation, with the weight gain, the white hair, and the glasses genuinely made him resemble the real-life Jeffrey Wigand! Al Pacino was his usual over-the-top self, but it was still effective as the newsman Lowell Bergman. Christopher Plummer kind of caught me by surprise in the role of "60 Minutes" main-man Mike Wallace, but he does a surprisingly good imitation of Wallace’s style of interview, not to mention his mannerisms! Through a TV, we’re once given a shot of Plummer sitting cross-legged in his interview chair, facing the audience. And it looked damn near identical to the real Mike Wallace! The only gripe I have is with Jeffrey Wigand’s wife. She’s played by Diane Venora, who previously did the neglected wife to surprising effect in Mann’s Heat, but here she just comes off as annoying. I don’t know if it’s a matter of acting or of characterization, but she comes off as selfish, spoiled, and unsupportive. Like when Wigand first tells her that he’s been fired, her first reaction is, "What about our house, what about our car payments, what about our medical coverage?" Yes, those are valid concerns once faced with unemployment, but throughout the movie, she offered no support to Jeffrey Wigand’s choice to go public against big tobacco. All she thought about was herself.

I still say Heat is Michael Mann’s masterpiece, but The Insider does illustrate some spectacular filmmaking from a spectacular filmmaker, and it also features Russell Crowe in his finest role ever. 8.5 out of 10.