A Masterpiece in Narrative Story-Telling.

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2000)

Michael Mann's `The Insider' is not a great film. It is a masterpiece. It is simply one of the great films made in the past decade. The criticism in which `The Insider' received was that it was not an original film. It also been unfairly scrutinized by the media for it's `inaccurate' portrayal of the facts. People often forget that the `The Insider' is not a recreation of a factual documentation of a story, but it is simply a film, it is the highest art of it's kind.
What makes `The Insider' a masterpiece? To answer this question, film lovers who would disagree with me, should watch the films of Howard Hawks. In both of the directors' films, they share an uncanny common parallel. They are masters of the physical aspect of the film making process. Both directors believe that films must tell a story through the structural narrative drive, transitions of the images, cinematography, fluctuations in filmic rhythm, and especially the subtle execution of the realization of the film's thematic concerns. All of these qualities are masterfully demonstrated in `The Insider.'
In `The Insider' the film's ability to drive it's narrative, which it immeasurably serves to examine the character's psychological insight, makes it one of the great cinematic accomplishments in recent times. This is the aspect of the film that causes people to denounce the film as `unoriginal.' Yet, `The Insider' serves it purpose by presenting it's narrative with a force that can't be produced in a thousand of these so-called `original' films made today. `The Insider' is presented with candor and doesn't use any gimmicks to tell its story.
`The Insider' is also one of the few films, in the tradition of Howard Hawks, as a film, which uses the aesthetic of oversight, of creating the mise en scene of implication rather than overly stating the film's thematic concerns. Underneath the surfaces lie complex tensions between the character's pretense and their conscious feelings. `The Insider' could have gone to great lengths of how smoking kills millions of people each year by showing an autopsy of a diseased lung or a demonstration of injecting nicotine on laboratory rats, but "The Insdier" is not a Spielberg film, it is a Michael Mann film.
The photography of the film can also be described as momentous. Dante Spinotti, arguably the best cinematographer today, executed the photography where it serves the film's purpose by fusing the image with tension and apprehension. The most effective shot in `The Insider' is probably the close-up with the telephoto lens. This shot effectively distorts the background, which gives the image an unclear tension, which infuses the moment. The dull blue-green hues of the film also serve it purpose of creating an insomniac effect where the two characters are stuck in a nightmare in which they can't wake up from.
With this film, along with `Heat,' proclaims Director Michael Mann as the best storyteller today. Finally, the successor to Howard Hawks has been found.