Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 4.0
5 Stars for the Movie, 3 Stars for the Quality of the DVD
The Insider has little action, little violence and little romance. And it is one of the five best movies I have seen in the past five years. It is another in a long line of great performances by Al Pacino, who (in my book) is the finest living American actor. It also is the breakout performance of Russell Crowe, who unfortunately had to compete against Kevin Spacey's American Beauty performance, or he would have won the Oscar for his role as Jeffrey Wigand.These two actors have great chemistry in this movie about 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman's (Pacino) attempt to get Wigand to come on to his show and expose his secrets about the tobacco industry. The many fits of anger the two men rage are convincing (Pacino is at his best when he is extremely angry - witness the closing scene of Scent of a Woman). Crowe's portrayal of Wigand's many insecurities is masterful. These two men are on their game in this great movie and I can never turn it off when it shows up on cable (although I have the movie in VHS and DVD).About that DVD. A disappointment because it is misleading. I thought that the DVD contained a "making of" documentary and audio commentary of Crowe and Pacino. Since I know the dialog of the movie, I thought the audio comments of these two great actors would be a nice little add on not found on the VHS version. So I picked it up. BEWARE - in reality, the documentary is all of about 15 minutes long (if that) and the "audio commentary" of Pacino and Crowe is really just snippets (probably totalling all of 2 minutes) of interviews done with them that is embedded in the documentary. No actors audio track after all. I think enough DVDs have been produced where somebody who sees "audio commentary" assumes a separate track. WRONG!!A great movie, a subpar DVD. See it, especially if you love 60 Minutes.