Some movies simply entertain us. Others manage to expose something so unsettling about the world that they remain powerful decades after the credits roll.
Such is the case with Michael Mann’s riveting 1999 drama The Insider, starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, which is based on the true story of one man’s decision to take on Big Tobacco, and the heavy personal price he paid for telling the truth.
Crowe stars as Jeffrey Wigand, a former executive and research scientist at tobacco company Brown & Williamson, who possessed potentially explosive information about the tobacco industry. Pacino plays Lowell Bergman, the veteran 60 Minutes producer who recognizes the importance of what Wigand knows and works to persuade him to tell his story.
What follows is a tense battle involving corporate power, journalism, and one increasingly frightened whistleblower whose decision threatens his career, family, and personal safety.
Directed by Mann, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth, The Insider was based in part on journalist Marie Brenner’s 1996 Vanity Fair article about Wigand, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” Christopher Plummer rounds out the principal cast as legendary 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace.
But this is hardly a movie confined to conference rooms and television studios. Mann somehow turned the complicated mechanics of investigative journalism into a genuine thriller. And a human one at that.
At its center is Crowe’s anguished performance as a man forced to decide how much he is willing to sacrifice to reveal what he knows, alongside Pacino’s relentless Bergman, who becomes equally determined to get the story before the public.
“The real appeal to me of the film was to involve audiences as intensely as I could into characters who were very real,” said Mann in an interview with Charlie Rose. “In the kind of awkwardness of Jeffrey Wigand I was stunned by the humanity of it, just the raw humanity of it…And both men who are as polarized from each other as possible, both struggling against very large size adversaries. That’s the real emotional, and dramatic, intellectual appeal of the material.”
Not lost on anyone is that The Insider co-stars two of the most accomplished and revered actors of our time. It turns out that not only were the characters polarized, but that the actors themselves worked very differently.
“It was very interesting,” said Crowe in an interview with Larry King. “And we have a totally separate process, you know. I’m not looking for it. I’ve done my homework. I’ve done it since I’ve been at the set that morning in terms of specifically thinking what do I need to get out of this thing to push the story forward…Whereas Al will begin to discover it in that moment, which is very fascinating to watch, you know, but it’s just different from me.”
Released on Nov. 5, 1999, The Insider wasn’t considered a major box-office success, earning approximately $60 million worldwide. Critical acclaim, however, was another story. The film received seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director for Mann, Best Actor for Crowe and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was also nominated for five Golden Globe Awards and won numerous and varied prestigious awards worldwide.
More than a quarter-century later, its reputation has only grown. The Insider currently boasts an impressive 96% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, which ranks the film among its 300 Best Movies of All Time. Decades after it was released, it continues to be celebrated, both for its artistry and its enduring relevance.
Perhaps that’s because the questions at the heart of the movie have never gone away: What does it cost to tell the truth when powerful people don’t want it told? And who is willing to pay the price?
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