The Insider (1999)
Directed by Michael Mann
A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.
18 connections found
View:
18 films that influenced The Insider
What critics say influenced The Insider
Though the movie deals with the machinations of reporters and is being touted as the best journalism movie since "All the President's Men," it actually has far more in common with 1979's "The China Syndrome" (an executive at a nuclear facility publicizes dangerous practices with the help of a sympathetic TV journalist).
As revelatory investigations go, this is no All the President's Men.
Where a movie like All the President's Men -- to which The Insider has been compared -- wants to get us riled up and angry for society as a whole, The Insider can't really work on that level, even if that was the intention of director Michael Mann and writer Eric Roth.
It's the best movie about the complexities, challenges and moral conflicts of news reporting since All the President's Men, 23 years ago.
How about in "All the President's Men." Now, there are at least two with "The Insider."
But he isn't just stepping up onto a celluloid soapbox -- this wily, engrossing film is not only the best movie about journalism since "All the President's Men," it's also one of the most visually dynamic movies of the year.
It has been a long time since we've had an enjoyable paranoid thriller in the tradition of such 1970s movies as "The Parallax View," and "All the President's Men."
Though the movie deals with the machinations of reporters and is being touted as the best journalism movie since "All the President's Men," it actually has far more in common with 1979's "The China Syndrome" (an executive at a nuclear facility publicizes dangerous practices with the help of a sympathetic TV journalist).
And when it comes to scathing indictments of the television industry, Mann and company have already been bested by 1976's "Network."
There are few movie going pleasures that top the sight of a pissed-off Pacino going ballistic, and a couple of blowouts here join an impressive list of tirades from his earlier roles in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice For All, and the maniacal Scarface.
In his best role since Dog Day Afternoon, Al Pacino plays Lowell Bergman, the 60 Minutes producer who, despite having done his graduate work with Herbert Marcuse, goes against the grain of his mentor's critique of modern society.
There are few movie going pleasures that top the sight of a pissed-off Pacino going ballistic, and a couple of blowouts here join an impressive list of tirades from his earlier roles in Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice For All, and the maniacal Scarface.
An operative both within and against the system--a role that in some ways echoes the actor's earlier work in "Serpico"--Bergman is one of Pacino's best, most alive characterizations.
Perhaps Mann and his team were inspired by the work of Wong Kar-Wei (whose freeform Chungking Express The Insider often resembles in visual terms) or Dogma95 (the ideal co-developed by Breaking the Waves' director Lars Von Trier that prohibits the use of unnatural lighting, Steadicams, and the like).
Advertisement
The fact that Michael Mann can project the cold, arrogant power of these Big Tobacco bullies with as much dread and suspense as a physical thriller like Blood Simple or Straw Dogs is testimony to his greatness as a director.
He's like 30 something, a big, strong On The Waterfront type.
Perhaps Mann and his team were inspired by the work of Wong Kar-Wei (whose freeform Chungking Express The Insider often resembles in visual terms) or Dogma95 (the ideal co-developed by Breaking the Waves' director Lars Von Trier that prohibits the use of unnatural lighting, Steadicams, and the like).
What Mann accomplishes is more akin to Francis Coppola's masterpiece The Conversation: it's a claustrophobic case study of insiders appalled by the moral implications of their comfort and privilege, and of what awaits them when they become outsiders.
Advertisement
Like JFK (1991), The Insider uses all real names and places but simplifies and dramatizes the story to make the movie work.
He packs The Insider with a sleek, trademark visual style that has characterized all of his films, from 1981�s Thief through the recent Heat.
As his credits ("Heat," "Thief," "The Last of the Mohicans," TV's "Miami Vice") indicate and this film underlines, Mann practically mainlines intensity, and he uses his instinct for dramatic storytelling to fill every bit of this two-hour, 38-minute film with passion and tension.
And if I yet conisder that debut, Thief , to be my favorite of Mann's films, it is only by the slimmest of margins, and at least in part because of the romantic fact that it was his first; for by all means, The Insider is of that rarest of cinematic pantheons, a motion picture that is, in all essentials, perfect.
This is the same man who made a lengthy drama about corruption in the tobacco industry compelling stuff ("The Insider") , so one might say that with this cast making a heist movie should be child's play.
But writer-director Michael Mann’s magnum opus — the middle child among his ’90s masterpieces between “The Last of the Mohicans” and “The Insider” — is anything but simple … and stunningly so.
Indeed, after Heat, these two masters were never so great again (Pacino came close with The Insider and moments in Donnie Brasco and De Niro did a good job coasting through Ronin, but they basically gave up the ghost).
As written and directed by Michael Mann (Thief, Manhunter, The Insider), Heat is the apotheosis of a career-long interest in obsessive professionalism (seen in heroic and anti-heroic efficiency experts) and the tension between unruly law and criminal disorder.
Mann, who mastered style in his TV series "Miami Vice" and previous films like "Heat," adds substance to the formula with the intensely dramatic, fiercely principled "Insider."
He packs The Insider with a sleek, trademark visual style that has characterized all of his films, from 1981�s Thief through the recent Heat.
The gothic horror of The Keep, the cop/crook conflict of Heat, the historical drama of The Last of the Mohicans -- all were treated as Very Important Films, sometimes through sprawling running times, sometimes through lingering slow-motion images.
Michael Mann's career has spanned television and film over four decades and close to forty years ("Miami Vice," "Ali," "The Insider," "Heat," "Last of the Mohicans," "Manhunter," "Thief").
As his credits ("Heat," "Thief," "The Last of the Mohicans," TV's "Miami Vice") indicate and this film underlines, Mann practically mainlines intensity, and he uses his instinct for dramatic storytelling to fill every bit of this two-hour, 38-minute film with passion and tension.
Mann built his reputation with the polished, highly volatile and physical drama of TV's Miami Vice, and on the big screen with The Last of the Mohicans and Heat.
Director Michael Mann (The Last of the Mohicans, Heat) has been making compelling films for quite some time now, but The Insider may be his best work to date.
The gothic horror of The Keep, the cop/crook conflict of Heat, the historical drama of The Last of the Mohicans -- all were treated as Very Important Films, sometimes through sprawling running times, sometimes through lingering slow-motion images.
Miami Vice creator Michael Mann (The Insider) returned to the action-movie fray with this 1986 story of an FBI investigator on the trail of a psychotic killer.
Having worked with Mann several times since ’86 (“The Last of the Mohicans,” “Heat,” “The Insider”), the vet cinematographer recounts his challenges working for a new director and explains many of his shot selections, night filming and the minimalist prison cell set.
(It wasn't until 1999's The Insider that he learned to calm down and trust a story again.)
Directed by Michael Mann -- the creator of "Miami Vice" who followed this film with "The Last of the Mohicans," "Heat" and "The Insider" -- it's more about style and highly conflicted characters than creepy gore.
His commentary with James Caan on the “Thief” DVD is superb, however he has refrained from doing commentary tracks on later discs like “Last of the Mohicans,” “Heat” and “The Insider.”
But hints of Mann’s recent, brilliant The Insider abound, too — long, steady shots that add a terrifying stillness.