Film Review: The Insider

By Tadhg Curtin

Making the decision to do the right thing at a cost has never been more difficult than in Michael Mann’s brilliant and prescient drama, The Insider (1999).

A fictionalized account of a true story, The Insider is based on a 60 Minutes segment which featured Jeffrey Wigand, an American whistle-blower in the tobacco industry. It follows his and CBS producer Lowell Bergman’s struggles as they defend his testimony against efforts to discredit and suppress it by CBS and Wigand’s former employer.

The Insider is a fantastic psychological thriller from Michael Mann and co writer, Eric Roth. He teamed up with Al Pacino once again after their work on Heat a few years before. Pacino plays Bergman in a role we had never seen him before; an intellectual worker. For Wigand, Mann cast Australian actor, Russell Crowe. Given that Crowe was only 33 years old at the time, playing a man in his middle age, it was an odd preposition but it pays off because Crowe is fantastic. His character is paunchy, depressed, and defeated. You really feel the weight of the world on Wigand’s shoulders. The rest of the cast is superb as well - Diane Venora, Christopher Plummer, Debi Mazar, Sir Michael Gambon.

Given that its Mann, we are treated to an amazing score by Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bouke. There is quite a bit of hand held photography in The Insider compared to Mann’s work previously. It’s shot by then frequent Mann collaborator, Dante Spinotti and they give it a documentary feel. The camera gets right in peoples faces. It projects the paranoia and potential threat that exists in this story. Once again Mann, mixes together authenticity with a hyper realist style with bravura.

“The greater the truth the greater the damage”. This is a line that Al Pacino says in the movie. He is talking about just how heavy a toll a decision is on Wigand’s life, domestically and professionally. When Meltdown comes on the soundtrack in the film’s most electrifying scene, you are watching a man being crushed and obliterated right in front of you.

Although well reviewed by critics, The Insider was not a success commercially. People probably thought it was going to be a lecture on the ill effects of smoking but it’s not that at all. It’s about making a decision in your life that while it may be the toughest thing to do at that time, it is the correct decision in the grand scheme of things. Once made, you can enter your house justified as a human being.

The Insider shone light on how big corporations lie to us with such frequency. And since its release, discussing the state of journalism today as well as challenging these giants is incredibly depressing. Proper journalism barely exists now. It is now apparently a specky dork out of college five minutes who glances at a tweet while on the toilet and decides they have a story. No research. It’s just “my side, your side”, a clickbait-ey headline and video thumbnail. Copy, paste, post. Guys like Bergman and Wigand are in short supply these days.

Nearly three hours long, The Insider feels anything but. It has an urgency that many dramas lack. It’s thrilling, thought-provoking and one of Mann’s absolute best.

Available on DVD, Blu Ray and to stream on Disney+