Role reversal

Rating: 6/10 (16 June 2004)

Many great actors fall into self-parody atone time or another. Brando did, Orson Welles did, and so has Al Pacino. A frequent criticism I've heard of Pacino over the last ten years or so is "now he yells all his dialogue", which is the layman's way or saying just that- that Pacino is playing some facsimile of himself, leaning on some remnant of past glories. Yet when we see Pacino in a different role, somethng unexpected of him, as the PC mayor in City Hall or the sleazy near-Satanic attorney of Devil's Advocate, the audience doesn't quite accept him. Of all the big actors, Pacino is the one most identified with a particular character, the crusader who fights the corrupt system- even if he's corrupt as well, as he was in the Godfather movies or Dog Day Afternoon. He now plays nearly everything over-the-top, like a Frank Gorshin doing an Al Pacino imitation (Glengarry Glen Ross was the last hint of subtlety or pinpoint anger), which is why his performance in "The Insider" comes as a pleasant surprise, even if the face is tired and the features slung low, he gives enough combative vitality to hearken back to the old days.

The thing I found interesting here is the casting: Russell Crowe, a man in his 30's playing a 50ish scientist and Pacino, a man of about 60 playing a 40 or so TV producer (even if he does look like he ought to be wearing glasses-on-a-chain). This time the "system" is 60 Minutes, who has Pacino working on an expose of the tobacco industry, then after Pacino gets a top scientist (Crowe) to go on camera with damaging information that will ruin the scientist's family and work life, 60 Minutes honcho Don Hewitt, kowtowing to corporate interests, decides not to run the interview. I'd like to think Hewitt and Mike Wallace in particular are not as bad as they come off here (Wallace is a brash egomaniac who ponders his legacy, his great gift to history and Hewitt so pragmatic and bottom-line-conscious he should be running a CPA firm).
The two lead performances are terrific: Crowe is superb as well as the true crusader that's in all of us; we want to be brave but with an eye toward the consequences. Christopher Plummer's Mike Wallace imitation is downright hysterical, although I swear to God he sounded more and more like the real Wallace by the end. The negative to the picture is Michael Mann's direction. His snail pacing is ponderous and he tends to present events as though they're Grand Opera. One scene where Crowe returns home to find his wife and kids have left him is so laughingly overscored, so superfluous in its indication of a great moment that it spoils the delicacy of the simple emotion. Mann, who also directed Pacino's cracked performance in Heat, seems to think he is creating epics, when, in fact, a movie with a theme of journalism should have been made to meet a deadline. I thought "Shattered Glass", another movie about journalism, was better crafted, more taut and concise. But see this one for two great actors in their glory, one current and one remembered. 3*** out of 4