Pacino Shines in The Insider

Opening shot-a blindfolded man is in the backseat of a car, driving through Lebanon. There's clearly a crisis going on, soldiers everywhere, every street run-down. The car stops. The man is led into a dark room, in a dark house, and is set down in a chair. A Lebanese man enters, obviously a powerful figure, and asks him what his purpose is. He answers that it's to get the scoop on a well-known terrorist, and the audience recognizes his voice immediately.

It's Al Pacino's; he's portraying Lowell Bergman, a highers-up for TV's Sixty Minutes, and even though Bergman is a real-life person, Pacino is clearly playing him Pacino-style. Most people don't know Bergman personally, but they can be sure he never announced "I'm from Sixty Minutes, TV's number one series!" in that throaty, snarly, overly exaggerated diction that Pacino has adopted for life.

But enough of the minor stuff: what the audience really pays attention to right away in this opening scene is that Bergman is not your typical ass-kissing reporter. Here he is, in a city plagued with violence and terrorist threats, blindfolded and risking his life for one story. Being held hostage is the price he'll pay for the information. One instantly admires his passion, his edge.

But wait-the audience hasn't seen real ferocity until the prune-faced, ominous Christopher Plummer has entered the scene; he plays the notoriously vain reporter Mike Wallace. He's the type of guy who will interview a terrorist face-to-face without batting an eye, and, when informed of the danger involved, will bark "Don't step in the way of my career, I'm Mike Wallace," or something to that effect. Stunned, Pacino watches Plummer take on the job with icy confidence, but he is by no means influenced. He has his own quiet boldness about him, and can keep his cool intact and his ego down while still achieving his mission. Plummer resembles the gut that brings America the news, but Pacino is the glory, the one who finds the news altogether.

Together, these two reporters bring the perfect mixture of pompous attitude and fierce drive to their assignments, and the end result is always a captivating story that contains more truth than any other news program has to offer.

Enter Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe in a compelling, Oscar-nominated performance) a recently fired employee from a prosperous tobacco company in Kentucky. He knows they put extra chemicals in the tobacco to increase the addiction rate and in turn the cash flow. Pacino wants the hard evidence and tries to coax Crowe into an interview. He eventually accepts, but the treachery won't be exposed that easily.

The company has received word of Crowe's intentions and threatens him with late-night phone calls, rustling in his backyard and bullets in his mailbox to get him to back down. These sequences are expertly photographed, and director Michael Mann does a superb job of generating tension: this film is no shoot 'em up action flick, like his previous Heat. He keeps viewers on the edge of their seats as they wait anxiously for Crowe to make his life-or-death decision.

Don't think this is the pivotal point of the film. This is not a "Will justice be served?" story. The heart-pounding chills are an entertaining element; the audience obviously roots for Crowe to emerge unscathed, but the film's real hero is Pacino. Having dug up the dirt and brought the story to light, he fights against CBS lawyers (one of who Gina Gershon, a long way from her femme fatale role in Showgirls) co-workers and even his boss (Phillip Baker Hall) who want to butcher the interview and keep the truth from the public because the tobacco firm threatens to sue.

It's a hoot to watch Pacino glide through some of the most hackneyed "Give 'em the truth and who cares about the consequences" speeches ever recorded on film. ("I didn't fuck you, you fucked you!" he bellows at fellow staff members for calling his goals too radical.)

But look past the corny dialogue and there's a strikingly coherent message of how the public has been taken for granted far too many times by cowardly media figures who splice and dice crucial information until it has no meaning.

The truth, no matter how controversial, still stands alone as the truth, and Pacino will see to it that it's delivered. While not an original form of heroism, it's still a worthwhile experience watching Pacino possess it.

Even better is the sweat-dripping paranoia rigidly displayed by Crowe, in a role just as hard-edged but far more complicated than his beefy detective character in L.A. Confidential. In a late scene, Crowe sits in a hotel room across the street from his former office, watching, waiting for his enemies to take action. It's a riveting mood that Mann develops, with all the shaky camerawork and fast close-ups of Crowe's clenched, pouting face, and we feel the anxiety, rather than just sympathize with it.

Sure, Pacino's got his own problems with bringing a hot story to the presses that will make or break his career. But Mann keeps reminding us that the one who really suffers in the meantime is the story's victim, waiting for the truth to be told, for it to make or break his life.