Mesmerising adaptation of a true story with outstanding performances.

Rating: 10/10 (6 June 2003)

`The Insider' has been compared in many ways to `All The President's men', released in 1976. While I found both movies to be brilliant, I don't find them to be similar in any way. While `All the President's Men' was a factual, claustrophobic look at the uncovering of the Watergate scandal, `The Insider' is much more subjective and at times, a bit more compelling. Anyway, `The Insider' is an outstanding and continually fascinating look at this story that occurred not so many years ago. It's not very often that I can say this and mean it, but this is one of the few movies that is engaging for it's entirety, and at 158 minutes, that's quite an achievement. It's just a shame that the movie didn't receive international success it deserved.
I wasn't very impressed with `Heat' (Michael Mann's last outing) so wasn't sure if this would be any good. Where I found `Heat' to be boring, `The Insider' was simply mesmerising. The flashy, shady directory techniques are magnificent and though this is a lot less murky and subtle than `All the President's Men' was, it still creates the desired effect. Backing up the excellent direction is outstanding acting from the lead actors.

The best performance comes from Russell Crowe in the first of his three nominations (Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind soon followed). His portrayal of Jeffrey Wigand is first rate and he proves he can lose the machismo for these quieter but very powerful roles. He definitely should have won the Oscar that year. Al Pacino does his familiar `grumpy determined' part but he's never done it with as much substance and pure gusto as he does it here. `Mr. Von Trapp'- Christopher Plummer, does his part quite well as the head of the network. Diane Venora plays her `good wife' part adequately but there isn't much material she has to work with. There's a big (if not un-necessary) supporting cast with average performances from the likes of Philip Baker Hall, Gina Gershon, Lindsay Crouse, Michael Gambon and Debi Mazar.
What most surprises me is the fact that the movie was nominated for 8 Oscars and didn't win a single one. It definitely deserved to win Best Picture ahead of the pretentious, contrived and manipulative `American Beauty', let alone Best Actor and Best Director.
`The Insider' is a brilliant and muchly under-rated account of the uncovering of the truth about the addictions of nicotine. It's just a shame that it didn't receive the huge audience it deserved. Definitely a film that deserves a reserved spot in the IMDb Top 100. My IMDb rating: 8.5/10.