Another Mann classic

Rating: Null/10 (10 August 2000)

Mark Kermode in his March 2000 Sight and Sound review said: The Insider ought to walk off with a basket of Oscars in March.' He goes on to say, of course, that it won't (and it didn't) and that Michael Mann and his movie should be proud to be outsiders.'
The fact is that the reason The Insider did not gain a single Oscar was because it was too risky. It treated a subject (whether or not the tobacco industry was involved in chemically treating its cigarettes to enhance their addictive properties) which was in its way as political as the equally neglected, and equally brilliant, Bulworth last year. It used as its basis a current affairs article and named names. Result: few people in Ipswich, or elsewhere outside London, can have had a chance to see this film, which was rapidly eclipsed on its release by the admittedly arresting American Beauty and the trivial efficiency of The Talented Mr Ripley.
A word about Michael Mann. Famous, some would prefer infamous, as the creator of Miami Vice, his feature film work has lent towards more challenging themes while retaining the surface sheen of that cops and robbers series. Manhunter (1988) anticipated The Silence of the Lambs in being a film about serial killers with Hannibal Lector as touchstone, but had a cop who was as screwed up as his quarry. The Last of the Mohicans (1992) brought visceral excitement to the costume adventure and Heat (1995, also with Pacino) returned to the hunter/hunted identification of Manhunter while returning the urban thriller to the chic of Bullitt after years of French Connection grittiness. All his films demonstrate Mann's qualities as a stickler for detail, a director ready to take a chance with a shot, holding it for longer than most would dare, and someone who likes to get inside the psyche of the macho male (pardon the tautology). The classic Mann shot has one of his characters silhouetted against a landscape, set below an evening sky in contemplation of his destiny, all with sensuous electronic music over the top. He is the thinking man's action movie director.
The Insider is in a way a change of direction: this is not an action film but an investigation, in the manner of All the President's Men or JFK . The setting is TV and the programme Sixty Minutes. Bergman (Pacino), the show's producer, receives anonymous documents casting dubious light on the tobacco industry and approaches Wigand (Crowe), a recently fired research and development employee for Brown and Williamson. And so it goes, the familiar twists and turns followed with precision and without condescension to melodrama or hyperbole. B&W sweat and threaten, CBS loses its cool, individual integrity is on the line. We've been here before, as so often in the movies, but rarely with such conviction and professionalism.
Pacino continues his recent spate of plum roles with a super performance as the man at the controls, a part he has made his own since The Godfather Part Two. Russell Crowe, in a part quite different to that in this Summer's Gladiator, is a stocky, greying, reluctant hero, and more than fulfills the promise of LA Confidential. The supporting cast, from Plummer's unctuous presenter to Gershon's acid corporate lawyer, all pull their weight, no doubt glad to be speaking a literate script for a director with a vision.