A Michael Mann film without the shoot out.

Rating: 9/10 (28 February 2010)

I started watching this at midnight, not knowing it was nearly 3 hours long, and did not feel urged to divide it into an additional viewing.
Everything you have heard about this movie is probably true.
Mann crafts a wrenching tale of two men's plight to adhere to their personal ethics. One a Newsman, Pachino. The other a scientist, Crowe.
If the satirical lunacy of "Thank You For Smoking" could be akin to the easy goings of Gerber Baby sauce, then this indigestion in the form of a laxative.
Mann's uncanny and infamous eye for precision and uncompromising realism is a marvel of stylish substance in itself. Almost like it's own thematic element regardless of what it's attempting to illustrate or accompany as a motif.
Unfortunately, I had been preprogrammed by his former films; "Heat,"0 "Collateral" and the often overlooked, "Miami Vice," to expect some sort of climactic hell-storm of machine gunfire. At first, I was actually--prematurely, at that--deeming this destined to be a stop-gap film in Mann's career. By mid-way, the sentiment of how wrong I had been was becoming more than embarrassingly palpable with each furthered development in the plot.
The film could have ended several times. It could have inferred several completely differing resolutions. It proceeds despite itself to formulate it's plot out of significant character's arcs and roles, rather than playing to simply Crowe's predicament. Mann's narrative and subject matter is so layered and sparse with an unrecognizable plot at first glance, it could have properly faired well as a mini-series, similar to that of "State of Play."