Premise - The true-life story of a man fighting an
American tobacco company to get his story aired on 90 Minutes.
Put seeing this one off for ages, don't really know why,
maybe the 2hr 35min running time put me off. It is certainly worth the
effort though. The Insider has easily made its way into my favourite long
films list.
Al Pacino is, as usual fantastic as the producer of
infotainment show 90mins. His frenetic portrayal is spot on as a man
fighting for his journalistic integrity. Russell Crowe however is just out
of this world as the tobacco company whistle blower. Under make up making
him look 20 years older he plays the part totally on edge making you feel
his paranoia. He was so on edge it is like they hooked up a coffee IV to
his arm. I also enjoyed the performances from Christopher Plummer and
Phillip Baker Hall, two of my favourite support players. Debbie Mazar,
whom I usually class as a repellent, unexpectedly impressed me.
The Direction from Mann was also excellent. Lots of interesting
POV shots and tracking shots following the characters around. I hold Mann
in high regard, his movies always seem to score highly with me -
From the ones I have seen -
LA
Takedown - 3/5, Last Of The Mochiahans - 3/5, Manhunter - 4/5 & Heat -
4/5.
The script, co-written by Mann is also marvellous. Cleverly
able to give us a lot of potentially confusing information in a short
space of time in way that you can not only understand, but also find
interesting.
I found the music in The Insider very fitting for the
movie, not what I expected at all for this kind of film. A bit of trance
crossed with ambient, strange choice but for some reason it just seemed to
fit nicely.
I don't usually go for true stories, but I enjoyed
this one immensely. The long running time actually only feels half as long
and because I was fairly ignorant of the true-life events I found it edge
of the seat stuff all the way to the end.
I was reminded a lot of
JFK when watching this film, man trying to prove something he feels
strongly about is threatened by a powerful entity and his life falls
apart. Although there is nothing wrong in being compared to JFK in my
book!
Highly Recommended
