Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 4.0
Beautifully Done, and, um...Long.
There are few directors whose work I enjoy as much, and can identify as easily, as Michael Mann's. He's a master at making the ordinary into something dramatic and seductive. And he really does know how to make the most of a soundtrack. This human docudrama follows the emotional destruction of a man caught between his conscience and a corporation trying to silence him, and of the journalists who drew him out and then are pressured to abandon him. (I will make the comment that I find it ironic that a movie about journalists wiggling away from the truth, has itself altered the real story.) Russell Crowe did an excellent job as the beleaguered tobacco executive, as did Al Pacino as an assertive television producer. Actually, all the performances are great. Bruce McGill enlivens one scene considerably in his role as a Mississippi lawyer. It maintains an edgy pace though-out its length, which is best described as really, really, long. Eventually I felt the way I do when I've spent too long in an art gallery. I became jaded, and began to wish that something else - anything - would happen to change the pace. Still, the length does allows us time to get to know the characters, and after all, it is a Michael Mann film, and that's all that matters.