Intense, realistic, and brilliant

Rating: 10/10 (13 October 2003)

Normally, films that use a lot of hand-held camera or oddly-composed shots really bother me. Michael Mann's use of the two in The Insider, however, is nothing short of brilliant. This is not a movie. It's an intense, visceral immersion in what it's like to put your future on the line for something you believe is right. The audience does not watch The Insider - it walks alongside the camera as two men, 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) and tobacco industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), put everything they have at stake to make sure the world finds out that the tobacco companies deliberately misled the public over the knowledge they had of their product's effects. It is a raw, powerful, engaging experience, with Pacino and Crowe at the top of their game (as well as a fine supporting turn by Christopher Plummer as 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace) providing masterful compliments to Mann's blistering direction. Possibly the best film of 1999 (jockeying with American Beauty), The Insider is one of the ten best films to take its story from actual events ever made.