Very close to being brilliant

Rating: Null/10 (7 January 2000)

There are times that The Insider will leave you breathless. The story about tobacco-industry scientist Jeffrey Wigland's tormented decision to blow the whistle. It's a story that needed to be told, having become almost a footnote during a time when the media was running from the O.J. Simpson trial to the Unabomber. Wigland risks everything he has in order to come clean on the deadly practices of the industry he worked for, and the movie tells his story ably.
But the movie also tells the story of Lowell Bergman, CBS Producer who fights to air Wigland's story. And it tells of CBS's cowardly attempt to snuff it out. Each of these entities could have its own story, but THE INSIDER tries to tell them all and loses its focus in the process. Is the movie centered around Wigland, who risked the most? Is it about Bergman's fight to protect his sources? Or is it a damning indictment of the big-business news industry?
Michael Mann would have been better to pick one of these players and focus on it. The movie begins with Bergman in Iran, setting up an interview. That scene was an apparent attempt to show Bergman's skill as a producer, but other than showing some exotic middle eastern scenery, it added little to the film that could not have been explained with a few lines of dialogue. The result is an overly long movie that has Wigland's story taking a back seat to the story of Bergman's stature.
The female characters are weak, as another reviewer had pointed out. Wigland's family disintegrates from the pressure he brought on his family, but you don't really see the love they have. Dianne Venora is wooden as Wigland's wife, a role made much worse by her pathetic, Scarlett O'Hara-ish southern accent. She never questions her husband's choosing to play with the kids while she's left to unpack the moving boxes. This is love?
Russell Crowe does an admirable job playing a complicated character, but suffers a bit under Mann's depiction of him. There was so much more his character could've added to it all.
What I wanted this movie to show me was why Wigland risked everything to do what he did. Instead, it simply displays the facts as it sees them and doesn't go far in answering the question "why?" Nevertheless, THE INSIDER does a decent job at telling a tough story.