This is the Movie They Didn't Want You to See

WARNING: The Surgeon General has determined that watching The Insider may be hazardous to your opinion of nicotine, CEOs in suits and Mike Wallace’s integrity.

The Insider is without a doubt one of the most controversial movies of 1999. It is also one of the most important—"important" in the way Schindler’s List, All the President’s Men and Dead Man Walking were important. It’s a film that puts you through the wringer and when you emerge on the other side of two-and-a-half hours, shaking and dripping with sweat, you know you’ll never again look at big business corporations or television journalism in quite the same way.

Michael Mann, best known for directing thinking-man’s thrillers like Heat and Thief, shifts down to a quieter, non-action tone with the true story of Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco company whistle blower whose life is turned inside-out when he gets a phone call from 60 Minutes. There are no car chases, no fistfights and the only bullet you’ll see is the one Wigand finds in his mailbox as a threat to stay away from the 60 Minutes crew. No, there’s precious little physical action over the course of nearly three hours. But there’s plenty of emotional action, which I find more gut-wrenching than any slo-mo bullet ballet.

As The Insider opens, Wigand (Russell Crowe) is fired from his job as a research and development vice-president for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company. We feel his humiliation and depression as he faces his wife and kids with the news. For a while, he lives on severance pay and medical benefits, until one day he gets a call from Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), a producer at CBS’ 60 Minutes. Bergman is doing a story on the tobacco industry and needs help putting research documents into layman’s terms. Wigand reluctantly agrees to meet with Bergman, but he can’t say much because he’s bound by a confidentiality agreement Brown & Williamson made him sign. Wigand, sweating and shifting nervously, clearly has a lot on his mind and Bergman smells a scoop.

Bergman brings Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) and 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall) on board. Guaranteeing Wigand’s safety, they tape an interview. Once the CBS lawyers get wind of Wigand’s confidentiality agreement, however, they clamp down and tell the newsmen that if his testimony is aired, CBS could be liable for a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Hewitt and Wallace then (according to this movie) pull the plug on the segment, airing an innocuous version which doesn’t mention Wigand by name. The whistle blower is hung out to dry while Bergman continues to fight network executives. As the movie progresses to a series of meetings, phone calls and court scenes, you’ll find yourself squirming in your seat from the unbearable tension. Mann and screenwriter Eric Roth (who won an Oscar for Forrest Gump) deliver a film that seems calm on the surface, but is like a simmering stew of rage, betrayal and agony under its skin.

The Insider is, at its nicotine-stained core, a movie about moral dilemmas. Nowhere is that more evident than Crowe’s breath-taking performance. The Australian actor so completely transforms himself into a pudgy, thin-haired American paranoiac that when I first saw the previews for The Insider, I didn’t even recognize him as the same person who’d given such an intense performance in L.A. Confidential. After watching The Insider, I’m still rubbing my eyes in disbelief. In a Method Acting dedication not seen since Robert De Niro’s in Raging Bull, Crowe gained an extra twenty pounds to play Wigand. And, in one scene where he takes off his shirt, you know the flab is all his own and not foam rubber from the makeup department. Even without the spare tire, Crowe conveys the impression of the extra weight with his slump-shouldered posture and ambling gait. It is one of the best physical performances ever put on film. It is also one of the most emotionally tortured. Weight gain and hair loss aside, Crowe plays the agitated white suburban male to perfection. Come Oscar time, I predict he’ll be arm wrestling Kevin Spacey (who also turned in a great tortured white male performance in American Beauty) for the trophy.

Just as Crowe’s acting has realism stamped all over it, the movie as a whole feels like a documentary. Mann uses a variety of techniques—hand-held camera, intense close-ups, indirect focus—that put us right in the lap of the situation. You’ll feel like you could reach out and touch Wigand’s sweaty brow.

However, another Surgeon General’s warning might be in order here. By most accounts, Mann and Roth’s script also does a little Silly Putty distortion on actual events. Bergman’s role may not have been as center-stage as the movie makes it out to be; and Wallace, who was incensed after reading a first draft of the script, says he fought harder for the Wigand segment than the movie shows. So, just as there was selective journalism going on behind the scenes at CBS, there was also certainly some tweaking of actual events in The Insider (a statement during the closing credits, thrown on screen by studio lawyers, may come too late for some viewers who have already left the theater). But then, who cares? The Insider is so good, I’m willing to open the window and let the truth fly outside. As with any piece of art (versus truth), manipulation of reality is acceptable if you want to tell an entertaining story.

With that in mind, it’s probably best not to swallow The Insider as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Instead, take it for what it is: a well-told morality tale about the perils of whistle-blowing.