Copyright
© 1999 by Michael Segers, All rights
reserved
The good news this week,
with the opening of Michael Mann’s The Insider, is that there are no
guys pounding each other to a pulp, sultry teenagers wearing nothing but rose
petals, or a head in a Tupperware ® container. But, the bad news is that there
are no guys pounding each other to a pulp, sultry teenagers in rose petals, or
covered dish supper surprises. To be blunt, at 148-158 minutes (I’ve seen
different running times at difference sources), The Insider is two and a
half times longer than the Sixty Minutes of the television program that
it focuses on and not nearly as interesting.
The film recounts the story
(as told in a Vanity Fair article) of Jeffrey Wigland, a recently fired
tobacco company executive. His Sixty Minutes interview was censored in
1995 when CBS brass got intimidated by the record of what big tobacco could and
would do after Wigland’s life was effectively ruined. So, we’ve got a good
story, one that is certainly worth telling, but, at best, in the ninety minutes
or so of a made for tv movie (of course, that would never happen).
Instead, director Mann
takes a lavish, epic approach to material that just does not hold up. For the
first quarter hour or so, he confuses his audience with the story of Mike
Wallace’s (Christopher Plummer) Hezbollah interview. This odd beginning
establishes the quality and integrity of the CBS news team, but do we really
need this, all fifteen minutes or so of this? Any more than we need about a
minute of a New York Times newspaper rack later—a profile, at that, not
even a front view so that we can read the headlines?
We finally get to America
for presentations of the two main characters, whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand
(Russell Crowe) and Sixty Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino).
Wigand has just been fired, and Bergman gets in touch with him as a consultant
on another tobacco story. We see both men in fairly long sequences with their
families, and yet, there is no connection made with the families, no sense that
either man acts out of commitment to save smokers or set a good example for his
children. Wigand’s motivation seems to be not much more than spite or revenge
for his firing. Bergman is a fighter looking for a fight, any fight. Crowe and
Pacino balance each other admirably. Crowe gained about fifty pounds for this
role, and he moves through it with a heavy solidity, almost weighed down, a big
man with a lot percolating just below the surface. Pacino, unfortunately, uses
the Bergman characterization as an excuse to play Pacino, all swagger and
attitude.
For much of its extended
time, the film moves between the parallel stories of Bergman and Wigand, with
the disintegration of Bergman’s professional relations and the breakdown of
Wigand’s marriage. There is some pressure by Wigand’s former employer for
him to respect the confidentiality oath that he signed, a threatening e-mail,
even a raccoon rooting around in the back yard, but somehow the threats never
seem to justify Wigand’s and his wife’s (Diane Venora) paranoid responses.
Mann doesn’t seem
interested in telling a story or holding our attention. There are a lot of good,
subtle touches, but the problem is that there is just a lot of a lot of stuff.
Somehow, Wigand’s story (with Crowe’s superb performance) fades out for the
flashier Bergman story and Pacino performance.
There has been some
complaining about the way Mann plays around with the facts. Well, this is a
movie, all 150 or so minutes of it, not a Sixty Minutes report. But, even
as a movie, The Insider does have problems. There is a good story here,
there is some clever filmmaking, there are at least two intriguing characters,
and with its politically correct topic, there may be a built in Academy Award
nomination, but somehow, everything gets lost in too many false starts, too many
problems.
I catch myself so often
complaining about the length and the wasted time in the films I review that I
decided to see if movies really are getting longer. I jotted down my candidates
for best suspense film (Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, 1960), best western
(John Ford’s Stragecoach, 1939), and best film (Orson Welles’s Citizen
Kane, 1941). You may not agree with my selections, but Psycho runs
109 minutes, Stagecoach 95 minutes, and Citizen Kane 120 minutes.
OK, I’ll give you Casablanca fans equal time, but not really, since the
time for Michael Kurtiz’s 1942 masterpiece is only 99 minutes. Except for Psycho,
the new kid on the block at less than forty years of age, these other films have
kept people talking and entertained for over half a century. So, to Mann and
others, please note.
If the current film does
pique your interest, you can find opposing view of the issues with from an
online book as well as from a web site maintained by tobacco companies. The
Cigarette Papers begins with a quotation from a federal court case that its
documents "may be evidence supporting a ‘whistle-blower's’ claim that
the tobacco company concealed from its customers and the American public the
truth regarding the health hazards of tobacco products" (Judge Harold
Greene):
http://galen.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/cigpapers/book/contents.html
Tobacco Resolution
presents "A source for information about tobacco industry topics" from
the tobacco companies:
http://www.tobaccoresolution.com
Closer to the topic of
movies in general, The Hackademy Awards of the American Lung Association
tracks smoking in movies:
http://www.lungusa.org/events/tutd/home.html
Keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and remember the sad lesson of this film, that perhaps some whistles are not meant to be blown.
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