The Insider Review by Tim Wick

Three out of Five Beakers

There are times when I appreciate the fact that I am writing these reviews for an audience of about ten. I am less likely to be flamed when I make a statement like the one I am about to make. You see, I'm going to tell you that I really wasn't all that impressed with The English Patient. A cry goes up that this is supposed to be a review of The Insider and you already feel cheated because I'm just getting into my review. That is coming, but let me talk about The English Patient first. Believe me, you'll understand why. And if you don't, it's not like I'm annoying more than a dozen people anyway.

You see, I can't really point to what bothered me about The English Patient very easily. The movie was well shot, well written, well acted and well directed, but I couldn't get into it. It felt too slick. It felt like a movie that was made to win a "Best Picture" Oscar and not make out of any desire to create a lasting work of art. That might have just been me, but that lingering feeling kept me from really enjoying the movie. I kept saying "this isn't risky, or new, but it sure is the type of movie that wins awards".

That is what annoys me about the Academy Awards. I go and see incredible ground breaking films and they are not nominated. Then I see a comparatively safe though good film and I can predict it will get a nomination. This year, The Insider is such a film.

I fear my impression of this movie was colored by the fact that it has received an Oscar nomination for best picture. Going in, that sets my expectations rather high. Having seen American Beauty. The Green Mile and The Sixth Sense I had what was an understandably hight expectation for this movie. Especially given brilliant and original movies like Magnolia, Three Kings and Being John Malkovich failed to be nominated.

So I saw this movie and was annoyed. Annoyed that one of those other films was beaten out by this. The movie is good. It is very good. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others. But I felt cheated. I wanted to stand up and holler "this is nominated for a best picture? How dare they?"

If you've been living under a rock, you don't know that this movie is about the whistle blower from the Tobacco industry who appeared on Sixty Minutes and pretty much set in motion the country-wide lawsuits against the big tobacco firms. The story is very compelling. A man risks his life and his family to tell the truth about one of the most corrupt businesses in the country and CBS almost doesn't air it. His life is nearly destroyed as one producer fights with all his might to have the segment see the light of day.

Russell Crowe plays Jeffrey Weigand, the whistle blower. He, like the movie, is nominated for an Oscar and that nomination is well deserved. Weigand is not a traditional hero. He stands up to the tobacco industry, but he frets his way through every move, only too aware of what he loses with each decision he makes. The courage Weigand had in the face of threats, the destruction of his family and lifestyle and eventually the smear campaign levelled against him is more than I could ever hope to have. Crowe pulls off the role with the touch of a master. I can't tell you how jazzed I am to see him in Gladiator later this year.

Al Pachino plays Lowell Bergman, the Sixty Minutes producer who Weigand approaches with what he knows. Christopher Plummer plays Mike Wallace. Both real men have complained about their treatment in this movie and that is too bad. Pachino makes Bergman into someone who cares about getting the story, but also cares about the people behind it. He fights to get the Weigand story on the air long after it is clear the story is buried without hope of retrieval. You get the feeling he is fighting not only because he knows how great the story is, but also because he knows how much Weigand suffered to tell it. Plummer's Wallace is a competent news man who is a bit crippled by the concern for what he leaves behind. He is not a bad man, but his lack of courage contrasts the powerful characters of Pachino and Crowe.

What drove me nuts was the cinematography. They chose not to use steady cams, so the whole film had an almost COPS feel to it. That may have been the intent, but I found it distracting. I hate having the camera move off the characters face and to their shoulder just because the director and cinematographer thought the effect would be cool or moving or poigniant or whatever the heck they thought it would be. It was annoying.

The film is also too long. I have had extensive arguments to my friends that you can see the hand of a good or bad editor in a film and here is an example of a poorly edited film. Lots of fast cuts, but still the movie moved slowly. I really didn't get involved until Weigand gave his interview and it took almost an hour to get there. I still had an hour and a half to go, so the movie had almost lost me. I can easily think of twenty minutes that could have been cut from the film without any loss of quality.

If this films wins the Oscar, I will be annoyed and surprised. But it is a good film and worth seeing. Three out of Five beakers.