Looking In
The Insider
On general release. Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Al Pacino, Russell Crowe.
Some films pop like a soap bubble with the first bar of the closing music, and some plant a seed that grows, so that the further away you are, the better it seems. In consequence, some films are more interesting to write about than to watch, and vice versa. Standard no-brainers are the ones that pass the time, and you can't recall them ten minutes later. The Insider is not a diverting piece, yet it is packed with relevance, heaviness, and unfortunately, worthiness. It is a good film, but one where the enjoyment is in talking about it. It is the best film of its sort since All The President's Men, but contenders for that award are few. The story is as unsexy as they get, the bad guys don't shoot anyone up, as in Mann's Heat, and beyond Michael Gambon's reptilian CEO, the actual evil in the film is quite removed from any common sense, natural justice concepts. Big tobacco is economic with the actualité; CBS management are concerned about profit. Well hold the front page. That, however, is what the serious papers in the States did when the story broke. Which was brave, as the news value needs careful explanation. No one is denying that cigarettes kill you, only that they meet a federal definition of the word drug.
60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) is the hero: he takes a chance meeting and develops it into an all American scandal. He is sent boxes of Philip Morris' scientific reports and seeks someone to decipher them. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) is recommended, but he has just been fired for 'poor communication skills' as head of research from a rival firm. Bound by confidentiality, and touchy and paranoid, he is reticent to Pacino, yet aching to speak. Bergman and his presenter, Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer), tease, manipulate, and engineer a story out of Wigand will and won't say. Wigand's former employers attempt to tighten his confidentiality; and someone plants a bullet in his mailbox. When Bergman and Wallace have the story, the network goes chicken on them.
Mann's script, whose biggest explosion is Crowe's cigarette lighter in a chemistry lesson (and I raised an eyebrow at that lighter), therefore concentrates on Pacino wringing a major scandal out of ostensible dirty dealing and legal pedantry. It's nicely handled and a fat budget that allows a thoughtful pace and excellent cinematography. No one else could have done it as well. Oliver Stone would have been far more clumsy around the imperfections of the characters, when it's their very flaws that give the story its substance. Mann is a macho director, happiest when his actors are shooting or shouting. As in all his films, a woman's place is in the background. Diane Venora as Wigand's wife is underdeveloped. Does she leave him because of the pressure allegedly applied by his former company? or because he is an intense, labile, arrodant and a drinker? or because he moves from big shotsville to being a teacher? The polemic has to imply the former, but the other two seem more realistic, especially as the credits have had to add 'allegedly' to the death threats.
Pacino has plenty of meat in the central role, but he's been better. He's played real people before (e.g. Serpico) and isn't intimidated by that, and his performance is craftsmanlike and always good. It's just that if the script calls for yelling, he's there. When he gets mad, he gets even better. It's Crowe and Plummer who win the laurels here. Especially Plummer as the anchor man with every syllable oiled. Crowe could have easily have opted for the usual eye rolling performance of a man under strain, but delivers a complex, almost coherent portrait of a conflicted man.
The Insider is not a straight factual film: several elements have been 'adjusted' in the interests of pace and excitement. But it's a serious, multi-faceted film, that allows most sides their arguments. It drags under its own worthiness, but it's still worthwhile.
