Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 4.0
So close, you have to see for yourself.
It really is the perfect combo. Mann, director of thriller-of-the-decade 'Heat', along with giant Pacino and hot property Crowe. Add an excellent supporting cast (including Plummer), a true story with real drama, and atmospheric music, and you appear to have the ideal package.Except . . . except . . . it's too long. And I hate saying that, because I LIKE long movies, but there's just not enough drive in this to make it to the end without a push. Mann also seems confused about his lead - Crowe gives a superlative performance worthy of the camera's eye, yet at the end of the day it's Pacino who gets the closing shot. Crowe's character is cast aside. Is this a veiled comment on Pacino's character's attitude towards his charge?But Mann's accomplishment, in the end, is to create a masterwork which, as you watch, you forget is a film. All the characters and actors seem to be real, and you tune in so perfectly to the style and direction that any other film, watched after 'Insider', seems thin, cartoonish. Two-dimensional. That is Mann's unique gift, and you're missing out if you miss it.