A Buena Vista release of a Touchstone Pictures presentation of a Mann/Roth production of a Forward Pass picture; Produced by Michael Mann and Pieter Jan Brugge; Co-produced by Michael Waxman; Written by Eric Roth and Michael Mann; Based on the Vanity Fair article ?The Man Who Knew Too Much? by Marie Brenner; Directed by Michael Mann
Opens November 5, 1999
When the media finally got hold of hard evidence that cigarettes were addictive and indeed deadly, America simply nodded and went about its business. After all, we know that cigarettes kill. So, basing a film around this subject matter wouldn't at first glance seem the stuff of high drama. Yet, in the hands of Michael Mann and Eric Roth -- and thanks to a superb ensemble of actors -- The Insider is at once a profoundly moving and intellectually engaging journey. In fact, it may herald the return of the provocative adult drama.
The film is based on a series of events that took place in 1995 when Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a recently-fired VP of Research and Development for the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, decided to tell the truth about tobacco on 60 Minutes. As the title of the film suggests, Wigand is the ultimate insider, a man who sees the daily lies and corruption of corporate America. Faced with a moral crisis about his knowledge, he eventually blows the whistle on the tobacco biz, at the cost of all he holds dear.
After giving a deposition to get his knowledge on the record and then taping the 60 Minutes interview with Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer), Wigand's world falls apart. His wife leaves him and Brown & Williamson -- the embodiment of the evil empire -- makes brutal threats, eventually implementing a smear campaign against him. Then, the crippling blow comes -- the powers that be at CBS decide not to air the segment due to fear of the legal repercussions. Translation: Brown & Williamson has enough money in their legal department to litigate until hell freezes over. With his life in ruins, Wigand accuses Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), the CBS producer who first recruited him, of manipulation and misuse. In point of fact, Bergman champions Wigand until the end and it's this element of the story that really gives the film its grandeur and intensity.
The reason The Insider works so well is because director/writer Michael Mann and writer Eric Roth have chosen to focus on the characters -- none of whom are perfect and all of whom expose human nature in its rawest state. Lowell Bergman stands at the center of the maelstrom as a producer whose integrity is based on his ability to protect his sources. In many ways, despite the title and the early focus on Wigand, this is Bergman's story, a true hero's journey that traces his willingness to sacrifice his own security to win the battle against the CBS brass. As portrayed by Pacino, Bergman is a man with balls of steel, whose bullish positioning belies a truly idealistic and gentle spirit.
Providing a delicate counterpoint to Pacino's boisterous performance, Russell Crowe brings a quiet nobility to Wigand. As Mike Wallace tells him, We're running out of heroes; guys like you are in short supply. Crowe's Wigand is indeed a hero, although not in the mythic sense. He is fallible, reluctant and, in the end, both luminous and tragic. The torture in Crowe's eyes when he learns his sacrifices have been for naught transports us to a whole new world of pain, forcing us to question our own morality in the same situations. The rest of the cast is uniformly strong, especially Christopher Plummer, whose Mike Wallace is an aging media giant torn between being doing what he knows is right and risking his celebrity.
While all the actors elevate this material, they wouldn't be as affecting as they are if they didn't have something to sink their teeth into. Mann and Roth have courageously attacked the big ideas here, exploring complex issues of morality an