Review: The Insider

For Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), the titular Insider, the truer his truth, the bigger the trouble. If he tells the truth, he saves lives. If he tells the same truth, he could topple a multi-billion dollar industry and/or a prestigious television network. If he tells this truth, he could lose his wife, his children, his reputation, and possibly his life.

This is Jeffrey Wigand: a former head of research and development and a corporate officer at Brown & Williamson, the third-largest tobacco company in the nation. This is what Jeffrey Wigand knows: Brown & Williamson and all the tobacco companies are fostering nicotine addiction despite their statements that they are not. "We're in the nicotine delivery business," he states authoritatively. He states this on 60 Minutes in an interview conducted by Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). The interview may never even air.

Why not? It's a valid question. This is, after all, the sort of hard-hitting, illuminating investigative report one has come to expect from 60 Minutes. Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), Mike Wallace's longtime segment producer, certainly thinks so. He's a dab hand at sniffing out a winner and he senses one in the concentrated but wary Wigand. "He's got something to say and I want it on 60 Minutes," he tells his crew, but there are complications to be overcome.

First of all, when Wigand was fired from Brown & Williamson, he signed a confidentiality agreement forbidding him to talk of the work he oversaw while employed at the company. If Wigand is compelled to talk, via court public record, the confidentiality agreement could be circumvented. Despite his wife's (Diane Venora) misgivings and fear for their safety, Wigand is compelled - sometimes out of anger, sometimes out of the need to protect his integrity, sometimes out of concern for public safety. It won't be easy: aside from the constant death threats, a smear campaign is being waged against Wigand to silence him. While Wigand is fighting his battles, both internal and external, Lowell is struggling to prevent leaks to papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and rallying to get the segment to air as is.

Writer-director Michael Mann has made only a handful of films, all good. The last two, The Last of the Mohicans and Heat, were particularly noteworthy. As is The Insider, which continues his theme of morally ambiguous men caught in existentialist battling. Mann's focus this time is on a more intimate level and Dante Spinotti's camerawork reflects this. At times, the frame can barely contain the faces. People go in and out of focus, in and out of shadows. Spinotti also shoots characters in deep focus - the focus shifts between the two people in the frame, sometimes between the character and their background. Eyes and ears dominate.

The acting - from Bruce McGill and Wings Hauser as dueling attorneys to Michael Gambon's slithery Brown & Williamson head honcho to Gina Gershon's sleek CBS go-between to Diane Venora's glamorous Southern belle struggling to be a supportive wife to Christopher Plummer's irascible and feisty Mike Wallace - is flawless.

Mann, who elicited a complicated and restrained performance from Pacino in Heat, does so once again. Sometimes one takes for granted the talents of a prodigiously gifted actor; The Insider reminds us not to. It also reminds us how exhilarating it is to watch an actor in his prime and that is the joy of watching Crowe, who's long delivered excellence (Proof, Romper Stomper) but has only now come to the fore due to his superb turn in L.A. Confidential.

Crowe, hiding behind manufactured wrinkles, assisted gray hair and a self-grown paunch, is nearly unrecognizable as Wigand. Crowe plays him on edge, as if he could be unstrung at any second. And he could be. As Crowe delineates in a precisely calibrated portrayal, Wigand is a man who prides his integrity, who lives and breathes by his emotions, who wants to do right for himself but also for his family - thus is he in eternal conflict. It was only Jeffrey Wigand's ambition to tell the truth and that is exactly what Crowe does - he tells Wigand's truth by inhabiting and revealing the truth of Wigand himself.

The Insider

Directed by: Michael Mann

Written by: Eric Roth, Michael Mann; based on the article "The Man Who Knew Too Much" by Marie Brenner

Starring: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse, Debi Mazar, Stephen Tobolowsky, Colm Feore, Bruce McGill, Gina Gershon, Michael Gambon, Rip Torn, Wings Hauser, Cliff Curtis