Powerfully engrossing

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2000)

A film that is very gripping, "The Insider" is very deserving of it's seven oscar nominations. Russell Crowe and Al Pacino are excellent as Jeffrey Wigand and Lowell Bergman respectively. Film follows Wigand, a tobacco exec who's been given the boot by his CEO boss on the basis of "poor communicative skills" which in other words stands for "c**p". Bergman is a TV producer for 60 Minutes who convinces Wigand to go on the air with his story of why he may have been fired and releases some pertinent info about the tobacco company. A particularly brilliant opener follows the two main characters in their lives with Pacino's Bergman trying to prevent an already heated argument between a well known terrorist and Mike Wallace (a well done Christopher Plummer) and Wigand leaving his job. Another powerful scene takes place in a Mississippi courtroom where a lawyer truthfully tears into another lawyer and lets him have it. Christopher Plummer does an excellent job as the gruff Wallace who in one particularly scenery chewer, rightfully crushes the spirit of two CBS lawyers with some seriously hurtful insults. Michael Mann uses his visual flair to bring story to the controversial subject of tobacco, the media, and the destruction of man.