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As the urgency of the story increases, so does the film's palpable sense of paranoia, inviting favorable comparison to All the President's Men. While Pacino downplays the theatrical excess that plagued him in previous roles, Crow is superb as a man who retains his tortured integrity at great personal cost. The Insider is two movies--a cover-up thriller and a drama about journalistic ethics--that combine to embrace the noble values personified by Wigand and Bergman. Even if the details aren't always precise (as Mike Wallace and others protested prior to the film's release), the film adheres to a higher truth that was so blatantly violated by tobacco executives seen in an oft-repeated video clip, lying under oath in the service of greed. --Jeff Shannon
| ACTORS: | Al Pacino, Russell Crowe |
| CATEGORY: | DVD |
| DIRECTOR: | Michael Mann |
| THEATRICAL RELEASE DATE: | 05 November, 1999 |
| MANUFACTURER: | Walt Disney Home Video |
| MPAA RATING: | R (Restricted) |
| FEATURES: | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby |
| TYPE: | Feature Film-drama |
| MEDIA: | DVD |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
| UPC: | 717951007391 |
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Customer Reviews of The Insider
Ugly American's The Insider is about the American tobacco industry and its efforts to suppress a segment prepared for CBS television network's "60 Minutes" in 1995. The "60 Minutes" story, produced by Lowell Bergman and presented by veteran newsman Mike Wallace, alleged that tobacco companies had long known of the disease-causing effects of smoking, were well aware that nicotine was an addictive drug and indeed deliberately enhanced the effect of nicotine through the use of chemical additives. In Mann's film, Bergman (Al Pacino) first encounters Wigand (Russell Crowe), recently fired by Brown & Williamson, while looking for a consultant on a story concerning the fire hazards of smoking. Bergman senses that Wigand has a significant story to tell. But the latter has signed a confidentiality agreement with his former employer; if he tells "60 Minutes" what he knows, he'll lose his severance package, including medical coverage, a major issue in the US. He comes under immense pressure to remain silent; his family receives death threats; his marriage eventually breaks up; Brown & Williamson launches a smear campaign. Crowe is especially fine. Pacino proves that his over-acting and histrionics in too many films have been largely a product of having weak material to work with.
The most remarkable feature of the film is the hostility it expresses, and encourages in a spectator, for the profit system. The depth and purity of this hostility is breathtaking. It is the depth and purity of this hostility that provides the film with its aesthetic. This, I think, is what one responds to more than anything else. The filmmakers present the heads of the tobacco companies, the "Seven Dwarves" as thoroughly despicable, irredeemable characters. Wigand's former employer is prepared to go to any lengths to protect its interests. The ugly face of Brown & Williamson is the ugly face of big business in America. Mann is only confirming what everyone already knows in his or her heart. It's not discussed in polite company, no one in the corporate-controlled media will mention it, but everyone knows it. The Insider could only come into being, could only possess its power, because it tapped into an accumulated build-up of disgust and anger, a general feeling that "enough is enough." Many people are sick and tired of a society in which everything is organized in the interest of the rich and powerful. That's what the film's about, whether anyone likes it or not.
What a great film!
Michael Mann has delivered an engrossing, visually compelling film about a subject that could have been lifeless and boring. This story of Jeffrey Wigand, a corporate VP and scientist for the Brown & Williams tobacco company, kept me riveted to my TV screen.
Wigand, played by Russell Crowe in an incredible performance, blew the whistle on Brown & Williams and their corporate policy of using cigarettes as the means to deliver altered nicotine to their customers. His decision to do so resulted in personal hardship for him and his family.
The other part of this story is about Lowell Bergman, played by a surprisingly low-key Al Pacino, and how he convinced Wigand to tape an interview with Mike Wallace exposing the B&W information. When CBS realized that the story could open them to litigation, they refused to run the 60 Minutes interview.
This film tells of the turmoil surrounding both Wigand and Bergman as they find out that, in big business, money sometimes overshadows integrity.
This is not an overly preachy film. It delivers a message as much about personal integrity as it does about corporate greed. Wigand is portrayed as a faulty hero - at times dislikable, at others a heroic figure who just wants to do the right thing. Kind of like most of us.
The DVD delivers a fine anamorphic transfer and the audio is a subtle but clean Dolby Digital 5.1 track. There are limited extras (as is the norm for most Disney studio films) but the short featurette was nice to have, as you see the real Wigand and Bergman discussing aspects of the film.
TOBACCO AVENUE
One of those films that I always meant to watch and only now, years after the fact, I get around to doing so, and I am a little disappointed. Docudrama about top tobacco corporate vice president who aligns with TV's "60 Minutes" to expose tobacco company standards is too narrow-minded in scope to encompass all the havoc the tobacco empire exposes on the world, relying on the sympathetic plight and near ruin of the family man executive whose behavior borders on paranoia and insecurity. Al Pacino as a "60 Minutes" producer and Russell Crowe as the reluctant crusader executive both seem overdrawn as characters, Pacino in his familiar nervous edgy urban guy persona and Crowe as the weakling confused executive both grow tiresome after a while. Still, the movie moves along briskly and a surreal sequence where a hotel wall becomes an imagined memory invokes the sometimes hopelessness of tobacco addiction. But why does the film feel the need to mercilessly pick on "60 Minutes"'s Mike Wallace? I seem to be missing the inside word here.