Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 4.0
The every-day amazing story: Realism meets Hollywood.
A superb film about the high-stakes battle between a family man, Big Journalism and Big Tobacco.Michael Mann is a master of the every day. In all of his films - and even his lone dip into tv, 'Miami Vice,' - Mann successfully captures that feeling of the routine, of driving home after a long workday, of sitting down to dinner with the kids. It is that realism sprinkled over every frame of this movie that makes it so enthralling. There is no Hollywood-ending here. In 'The Insider,' words and actions have consequences, sometimes dire. Marriages dissolve. Lawsuits are filed. Jobs are lost. (you get the picture). All of that adds to the depth of our protagonist, Mr. Gladiator himself Russell Crowe, whose intensity in this film is palpable. I highly recommend it.