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.
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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.
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."
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).
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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."
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).
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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.
Like JFK (1991), The Insider uses all real names and places but simplifies and dramatizes the story to make the movie work.