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#436 - The Insider
Michael Mann, 1999
Based on the true story of a respected biochemist who intends to blow the whistle on a tobacco company's unethical practices but soon finds his personal and professional life falling apart as a result.
Michael Mann's career has always come across as a director whose work tends to be classified rather easily as "genre fare", most frequently involving dramas and thrillers that could be filed under the crime sub-genre. The Insider does technically involve crime as its driving source of conflict, but it is far different to just about every other Mann film I've seen. Here the crime is white-collar by nature, with the executives of tobacco companies using plausible deniability as part of their testimonies before Congress in regards to the addictive nature of nicotine. One such company's practices involve adding chemicals to increase addictivity, which prompts one of its most prominent biochemists (Russell Crowe) to speak up about the illegality of the company's activities. Enter a hard-hitting journalist (Al Pacino) who is cynical enough to know how corporations work (including CBS, which he works for in order to bring big stories to 60 Minutes) but still holds fast to a code of honour when it comes to protecting his sources even when others won't, which ends up causing all sorts of conflict between him and Crowe as the latter's decision to go public with his knowledge results in unemployment, marital strife, and threats that may or may not be coming from his former employers.
Pacino and Crowe both turn in a couple of their best performances here - the former keeps his cartoonish late-period overacting to a minimum, whereas the latter plays very much against type as a hapless family man who communicates a believable combination of frustration and vulnerability. They lead an impressive ensemble cast that all deliver good performances, especially Christopher Plummer as 60 Minutes interviewer Mike Wallace. They definitely elevate the story, which does threaten to drag a bit due to its lengthy running time and almost complete lack of external action, but that doesn't matter since it leans more towards drama than thriller and only has the occasional hint of justifiable paranoia to prop up the true-story narrative. Of course, while Mann has a tendency to get good performances out of a variety of actors, he has always been a director who made a name on the basis of technical prowess, and there is a lot of that here. There's a distinct colour palette made up mainly of blues and greens, which provides a largely mundane film with visual flair while also complementing the film's dour tone perfectly. While The Insider doesn't provide much in the way of elaborate spectacles, it is definitely not a film that needs such things to maintain one's interest. The fact that it can earn a reputation as one of Mann's best despite the lack of external action common to his other films is as good a testament to his filmmaking ability as anything else.
Michael Mann, 1999
Based on the true story of a respected biochemist who intends to blow the whistle on a tobacco company's unethical practices but soon finds his personal and professional life falling apart as a result.
Michael Mann's career has always come across as a director whose work tends to be classified rather easily as "genre fare", most frequently involving dramas and thrillers that could be filed under the crime sub-genre. The Insider does technically involve crime as its driving source of conflict, but it is far different to just about every other Mann film I've seen. Here the crime is white-collar by nature, with the executives of tobacco companies using plausible deniability as part of their testimonies before Congress in regards to the addictive nature of nicotine. One such company's practices involve adding chemicals to increase addictivity, which prompts one of its most prominent biochemists (Russell Crowe) to speak up about the illegality of the company's activities. Enter a hard-hitting journalist (Al Pacino) who is cynical enough to know how corporations work (including CBS, which he works for in order to bring big stories to 60 Minutes) but still holds fast to a code of honour when it comes to protecting his sources even when others won't, which ends up causing all sorts of conflict between him and Crowe as the latter's decision to go public with his knowledge results in unemployment, marital strife, and threats that may or may not be coming from his former employers.
Pacino and Crowe both turn in a couple of their best performances here - the former keeps his cartoonish late-period overacting to a minimum, whereas the latter plays very much against type as a hapless family man who communicates a believable combination of frustration and vulnerability. They lead an impressive ensemble cast that all deliver good performances, especially Christopher Plummer as 60 Minutes interviewer Mike Wallace. They definitely elevate the story, which does threaten to drag a bit due to its lengthy running time and almost complete lack of external action, but that doesn't matter since it leans more towards drama than thriller and only has the occasional hint of justifiable paranoia to prop up the true-story narrative. Of course, while Mann has a tendency to get good performances out of a variety of actors, he has always been a director who made a name on the basis of technical prowess, and there is a lot of that here. There's a distinct colour palette made up mainly of blues and greens, which provides a largely mundane film with visual flair while also complementing the film's dour tone perfectly. While The Insider doesn't provide much in the way of elaborate spectacles, it is definitely not a film that needs such things to maintain one's interest. The fact that it can earn a reputation as one of Mann's best despite the lack of external action common to his other films is as good a testament to his filmmaking ability as anything else.