The Insider

Michael Mann directs this gripping expose of the cigarette industry, based on a true story. ’60 Minutes’ producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) contacts Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a former research employee of tobacco giants Brown and Williamson, after being anonymously sent some damning documents regarding the company’s activities. Wigand reveals that B&W were aware their product contained dangerously high levels of nicotine – likely to cause cancer – and agrees to be interviewed for Bergman’s programme. As a result of this, Wigand is placed under increasing pressure to hold his peace; he receives numerous death threats, his marriage begins to disintegrate, and he becomes the subject of a smear campaign. When Bergman attempts to arrange for Wigand to present a disposition as part of the Mississippi state’s case against the tobacco giants, the move is blocked, and it seems that both men’s efforts will amount to nothing
As revisionist history, Michael Mann’s intelligent docudrama The Insider is a simmering brew of altered facts and dramatic license. In a broader perspective, however, the film (co-written with Forrest Gump Oscar-winner Eric Roth) is effectively accurate as an engrossing study of ethics in the corruptible industries of tobacco and broadcast journalism. On one side, there is Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), the former tobacco scientist who violated contractual agreements to expose Brown & Williamson’s inclusion of addictive ingredients in cigarettes, casting himself into a vortex of moral dilemma. On the other side is 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), whose struggle to report Wigand’s story puts him at odds with veteran correspondent Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) and senior executives at CBS News.
As the urgency of the story increases, so does the film’s palpable sense of paranoia, inviting favourable comparison to All the President’s Men. While Pacino downplays the theatrical excess that plagued him in previous roles, Crowe is superb as a man who retains his tortured integrity at great personal cost. The Insider is two movies–a cover-up thriller and a drama about journalistic ethics–that combine to embrace the noble values personified by Wigand and Bergman. Even if the details aren’t always precise (as Mike Wallace and others protested prior to the film’s release), the film adheres to a higher truth that was so blatantly violated by tobacco executives seen in an oft-repeated video clip, lying under oath in the service of greed. –Jeff Shannon,