Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Best Journalistic Movie Since Presidents Men
While still in the newspaper game herself, novelist Anna Quindlen once wrote a surprisingly self-flagellating column in which she said that journalists step in and out of people's lives as easily as they do a pair of shoes. They cajole folks into spilling secrets and then move on to the next story while the subjects are left to wonder if their candor was worth it.That's what happens in The Insider, the best movie about the inner workings of big-time journalism since All the President's Men(1976), except that in this true tale of an exceedingly bad day at CBS's Black Rock headquarters, both the source and the reporter end up feeling betrayed.The reporter is Lowell Bergman (Pacino), a veteran producer at 60 Minutes. In 1995 he persuaded Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe), a scientist and former high-level executive at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., to tape an interview with Mike Wallace in which Wigand blew the whistle on what B&W knew about smoking's dangers--and when it knew it.Wigand bravely did so despite death threats and an orchestrated smear campaign. But then the CBS eye blinked: Corporate brass, fearful of a huge lawsuit by B&W and of complicating the impending sale of the network, forbade broadcasting the interview. 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt (Baker Hall) and, albeit reluctantly, Wallace (Plummer, making like a preening cat) went along. Wigand was left hanging out to dry until Bergman fought back.Michael Mann (Heat), who co-wrote and directed Insider, tells this complicated story clearly and compellingly. The film runs for 2 hours and 35 minutes, but there's no fat in it. Pacino, shouting only when absolutely necessary, is convincingly intense in his refusal to accept that the rules have changed.But Crowe (L.A. Confidential) is the core of this movie. Bulked up and balding, he movingly portrays a man who learns too late that while the truth may set you free, the cost is often considerable.