The corporate law

Rating: 8/10 (7 November 2010)

In general, I'm not a huge fan of the films of Michael Mann, finding them unsubtle; and I delayed watching 'The Insider' for precisely that reason. A film about a heroic whistle-blower fighting against the evils of big tobacco: it sounds like a black and white story. And there are certain clichÃ©s in this movie: the selfish wife, for example, who doesn't stand by her husband when he can no longer provide for her in the style to which she was accustomed (although I fear that in one scene, where she contemplates the awful possibility that she might have to go out to work, that the audience is actually being encouraged to sympathise with her). And yet the first two thirds of this movie is really strong. Mann gets his A-list cast to justify their salaries, none more so than Russel Crowe as the whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigland, who displays a character he doesn't often show: nerdy, insecure, un-self confident, torn between conscience and self-interest. Precisely because Wigland is not obviously a wonderful (or indeed a terrible) human being, but an ordinary man, the story is more interesting; and black-and-white or not, the story of such an individual fighting the huge power of corporate America is terrifying and brilliantly told. I was gripped; but the last third of the movie doesn't quite have the same power. Partly it's because we see the same story again, now within a news organisation thinking about broadcasting an interview with Wigland. But however passionately the journalists care about the story, it's hard to believe that this is their fight in quite the same way it's Wiglands, some themes are repetitive, and the idea that a news organisation should make its decisions without commercial considerations is frankly nonsense; every journalist gets their salary only because someone is prepared to pay for the product, and I find it hard to believe that this is the only time that C.B.S. news has fallen beneath a standard of 100% purity. In this final part, Mann orchestrates more scenes with big music, perhaps because there a less powerful drama beneath it. Moreover, it's never completely clear what exactly is unique about Wigland's information. Yet for three hours, Mann made me share in his characters' well justified fear of persecution. That's an achievement; and this (in my opinion) is his best film.