Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 4.0
STELLAR PERFORMANCES
Russell Crowe is a talented and chameleonic actor. He can disappear into his roles, which is probably one of the most difficult things an actor can do. So many actors are easily typecast because they just cannot disappear, but in The Insider Crowe disappears into the role of a middle-aged American tobacco company executive living in the suburbs. The character gives up everything he has to be a whistleblower about the damaging effects of cigarettes on health. Crowe was amazing in this role and should have taken home an Oscar for his performance. This said, I am not one of the fawning sort of fans who thinks of Crowe as a sex symbol. I don' t really see the appeal toward that at all. This role is a good example of how he is so much more than that. The film is astounding and as often is the case all the more astounding because it is true. Al Pacino is his passionate and effective self as the producer who convinced Crowe's character to come forward and reveal these tobacco-industry secrets. Pacino's character fights the good fight for Crowe, but it never quite works out perfectly or happily. This is one of the truly remarkable elements of a film like this. It tells a story and tells it brilliantly without overmoralizing anything. Without beating the viewers over the head with anything. Without trying to wrap the story up into a neat little happy ending package. In real life, things end with loose ends untied, and this story shows that sometimes good does not ultimately triumph over bad. It may have small victories all along the way, but in moral warfare-indeed any kind of warfare-there will be a series of battles, some small and some large, and there are wins and losses all along the way.