excellent drama

Rating: 10/10 (4 November 2010)

How far would you go to tell the truth? How far would you go to protect a source? In 99.99% of the cases, the answer is: not very far, not when your job, your family, and your life is on the line.
"The Insider", a 1999 film directed by Michael Mann, dramatizes the true story of two men who stopped at nothing to get out their story - Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) and Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) though they are thwarted every time they turn around.
Michael Mann assembled a stellar cast - besides Crowe and Pacino, there is Christopher Plummer playing Mike Wallace, Diane Venora as Wigand's wife, Lindsay Crouse as Bergman's wife, Colm Feore as a Mississippi attorney, Gina Gershon as the CBS attorney, Michael Gambon as Thomas Sandefur, the head of Brown & Williamson Tobacco, Philip Baker Hall as Don Hewitt, and some Broadway people, including Roger Bart and Lynne Thigpen.
Jeffrey Wigand was a whistle-blower on his former employer, Brown & Williamson, claiming that the company was aware that nicotine was addictive and was using a carcinogen called coumarin in their cigarettes, though the "seven dwarfs" as Wigand called them, the big seven tobacco companies, all had lied in hearings about nicotine being addictive.
That's only part of the story. Wigand loses everything in his attempt to tell the truth - he is fired from his job, he has to sell his house, his family is terrorized until his wife and children finally leave him, a smear campaign is started against him, he is slapped with restraining orders, threatened with arrest, his computer is confiscated. And then the worst cut of all - 60 Minutes decides not to air the interview after pressure from the CBS Corporation. Tobacco, it seems, with its billions of dollars, can do whatever it takes to silence someone.
Lowell Bergman, realizing that his source has been left out to dry, goes to bat for him in order to get the interview aired, and turns the tables on CBS, risking his own career and relationships with people with whom he has worked for years. He finds out along the way what these people were made of -- not much. In the end, Wallace cares only about his career and legacy, and Don Hewitt bows to CBS. Bergman wins by playing the ultimate hardball and humiliating 60 Minutes.
This is a long film but a very gripping story. It takes its time to build instead of rushing the drama without fleshing out the characters. By the end of the film, we know who all of these people are.
I remember seeing this in the theater. It was very powerful in 1999, and it's even more powerful today. Why? Because I think there are way fewer Wigands and Bergmans in the world than there were 11 years ago, and it was a dwindling population then - people whose integrity is more important than money. In "The Insider," at least we get to meet two.