60 Minutes Lights Up.

Rating: Null/10 (3 December 1999)

60 Minutes has remained one of the most popular television programs of all time. Priding itself on its no-holds barred coverage of current events that really matter, its team of ace reporters have have blazed a trail for other news programs and have been successful in making people sweat. Now, finally, along comes a film that puts 60 Minutes in the hot seat. It's their turn to answer some tough questions.
The Insider is a true story about the tobacco industry, and in particular one man, Jeffrey Wigand, (Russell Crowe) a recently sacked VP for a tobacco company who goes to 60 Minutes to disclose some shocking information. Al Pacino is Lowell Bergman, a producer for the top rated show and would love to get Wigand on the air.
To date the tobacco companies have refused to admit that cigarette smoking is dangerous, and lawsuit after lawsuit has failed to convict them. Wigand has information that could change all that.
Bergman convinces Wigand to come forward, despite the negative impact it will and does have on his family, his safety and his life in general. The 60 Minutes team stands behind him through thick and thin, only until they too begin to feel the heat. When CBS finds good reason to back away from the story (by this time Wigand's neck is already on the chopping block) they pull away.
You can feel a certain sense of danger throughout this film and while watching it I kept fearing the worst. We don't see much of the big bosses at the cigarette companies, but we know they are lurking and we know they are a force to be reckoned with.
Wigand is a complicated character and Russell Crowe plays him brilliantly. We know this man did not come forward, simply because he feels a moral obligation. In fact his anger over their treatment of him incites him more so than his sense of duty.
Pacino's Bergman, on the other hand, is the last surviving member of the club for honorable journalism. He still believes in protecting his source, and will go to the wall, even when his own team won't stand behind him. Pacino gets in some great lines in this film that are somewhat reminiscent of All the Presidents Men.
We might have thought that Mike Wallace was the last honorable journalist, but this film proves us wrong. Here we see a man that is arrogant and pompous, as temperamental as a Hollywood diva. I would not have pictured Christopher Plummer in this role, but he handles it well. Even though Plummer looks nothing like the real man, we sometimes forget that this isn't Mr Wallace on screen.
Michael Mann has a powerful film on his hands. Nicely told, this film takes on the role that perhaps the original 60 Minutes segment should have. Here is a no-holds barred smack in the face to those powerful tobacco companies, and worse still, a stern reprimand for a program that has continually held its nose up at all other news shows.
The Insider is not an anti-smoking campaign. I think it would have been too easy to squeeze in a few shots of people dying of cancer, but that isn't the purpose of this film. The Insider takes us into the corrupt world of corporate politics. Furthermore, it reminds 60 Minutes that it is the grandfather of tabloid television.