‘Fame has a fifteen minute half-life, infamy lasts a little longer…’
As we know, I’m all over 90s cinema. It’s my happy place. So, one would imagine that a film directed by Michael Mann (Heat) and written by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump) would be a big deal, particularly when factoring in Russell Crowe in his heyday and the evergreen Al Pacino as co-stars. And yet only recently did The Insider – Mann’s 1999 thriller around a sole whistle blower in the tobacco industry – come to my attention. I must be slipping in my old age. My dotage has a lot to answer for. Having said that, I’m not yet senile enough to miss the opportunity to point out that Mann should have named his film The Inside Mann instead of the The Insider. Has he no respect for a pun?
Jeffrey Wingard (Crowe), a research chemist, becomes the victim of intense scrutiny following an admission about the tobacco industry during a 60 Minutes expose on big tobacco. Now, Lowell Bergman, the fearless journalist who persuaded Wingard to spill the beans in the first place, must protect both his source and himself against immense forces with unimaginable power.
In some ways, it’s understandable that The Insider slipped under the radar. While it is an explosive story, Mann likes to allow his character’s time to breathe, specifically 2 hours and 37 minutes in this case. It’s too long. You know it. I know it. Al Pacino probably doesn’t know it as he manages to shout and emote his way through the whole thing, but the fact remains… this would be a better movie if it were half an hour shorter. Which is a shame because seeing Pacino and a fairly mild-mannered Crowe jousting for a couple of hours is great fun. Probably not for the other actors I would imagine, but certainly for the audience.
The Insider was perhaps destined to fall out of the public consciousness, neatly demonstrated by the fact that it was nominated for seven Oscars and won none of them, but for fans of Mann’s previous work, or for people who like watching Al Pacino shouting (which, let’s be honest, is all of us), there is plenty to enjoy here. And if nothing else, it will send you nicely off to sleep by the end of it.