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You should tell someone, no? So what if you've been there 18 years, have a couple kids in college and a mortgage to pay? Right is right, and what they're doing is wrong. Geez, it's just appalling, perpetrating such a dastardly crime against mankind. But then, the reverberations your humanitarian act sets off could come back to haunt you. Remember, no good deed goes unpunished. They could very well turn you into kielbasi. They'll probably even coerce the janitor to throw you in the vat, threatening to fire him for paper theft if he doesn't co-operate. And then the bums will just continue to fatten their profits with those cheap rats' noses. After all, everything's a scam anyway, isn't it? The din of man's inhumanity to man is deafening. What can one person do? So, why stick your neck out?
Because occasionally, there emerges a Braveheart willing to buck the system. We have to believe it's so. That's the hope that keeps us going. Which brings us to the saga of Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco company chemist who wasn't afraid of being turned into kielbasi; at least not initially. The Insider is his heroic true tale, powerfully brought to the screen by director Michael Mann (The Last of The Mohicans).
A fine muckrake that enticingly dissects the fiasco which ensued at CBS following the title character's decision to come forth on 60 Minutes, it is passionately written, vibrantly acted, and stylishly photographed. Director Mann deftly melds his experience in the action genre (TV's Miami Vice) with a fine facility for seat-edged dramaturgy, making this rather long suspense yarn move brisker than its hefty 157 minutes would otherwise dictate.
The stellar triptych of performances propels the tangy script by Eric Roth, based on Marie Brenner's magazine article, "The Man Who Knew Too Much." They consist of a splendid Russell Crowe (L.A. Confidential) as Wigand, the disgusted research chemist/VP at Brown and Williamson who rationalises abrogating a confidentiality agreement after his fit-of-conscience ranting gets him dismissed; Christopher Plummer in an Oscar-worthy depiction of Mike Wallace that ingeniously meshes subtle mimicry with creative interpretation; and in the role of moral catalyst, Al Pacino is his piously familiar best as Lowell Bergman, the gutsy 60 Minutes producer who cultivates Wigand from an indignant man of science to a full-fledged whistle-blower.
One would think that taking on both the tobacco companies and the media is more than enough for one movie to chew on. Yet, expanding its deductions to a philosophically universal level beyond the nuts and bolts of the basic story line is what truly distinguishes The Insider. There is much to ruminate.
As flies on the wall at CBS, we are afforded a gossipy ear and eyeful. When the possibility of legal recrimination by Brown and Williamson convinces the suits at 60 Minutes not to air the scathing segment, not only does this hang Dr. Wigand out to dry, but it confirms our worst fears about collusion at the top. And the realistic threat to home and hearth that this Job for the nineties endures makes for completely absorbing tension, even if Diane Venora as the melodramatically unsupportive Mrs. Wigand is less than convincing. However, the real drawing card here is Dr. Wigand as the martyred everyman; trying to assert some dignity in a system engulfed by fiscal cynicism, this regular Joe's plight says fearsome volumes about the perils of heroism in modern consumerist society.
Director Mann, skilfully shepherding mood and action -- though he does at times overdo the operatic score and the multi-textured visual effects -- winningly imbues his commentary with a thought-provoking life between the lines. You can read it on the faces of the corporate bigwigs. Let's face it. Sir Walter Raleigh had barely completed his first delivery of tobacco when we already figured that this stuff couldn't be very good for us. "It'll stunt your growth" was the euphemistic concession to its suspected properties.
Hence, it is really no big surprise when Wigand tells Bergman that Brown and Williamson was monkeying with nicotine levels, ostensibly putting the company in the drug delivery business. (Gosh! You mean nicotine is habit-forming and that smoking is bad for you?) The surprising thing is that someone finally decided to upset the apple cart, and that society was at last ready to handle it. The deadly leaf has long figured in our economic equation, almost as ignominiously as the old Trade Triangle that moved money by swapping rum for slaves. Dramatising Wigand's travail, The Insider emotionally investigates the American conscience as it sheds the moral contradiction that tobacco has always represented.
But old habits die hard, especially when folks are making a lot of money off of them. Thus it comes out how interconnected those powers that be really are. Though a disclaimer in the closing credits notes that certain allegations against Brown and Williamson have never been substantiated, the movie shows the company fighting for its survival on two fronts, both directly against the chemist and through threat of litigation against CBS.
With Dr. Wigand's professional standing discredited and his domestic life decimated, the only hope for vindication is his testimony. Thus insult is added to injury when the scientist's divulgences are kept from seeing the light of day. As it turns out, there's a dirty little conspiracy at CBS involving multimillion dollar profits certain executives will reap if a planned sale of the network pans out. Needless to note, a pending suit by an angry tobacco company could certainly queer the deal. But with this revelatory movie, at long last Wigand is redeemed. Sympathetic to his ordeal, we are ennobled by his example.
Paraded before understandably jaundiced eyes, this feature-length disclosure can't help but be met with scepticism. How is it that this time we're finally being told the truth? What if we're merely being appeased? Of course, Mr. Mann's film is too savvy too suggest that the war with Big Tobacco is at last won. The real message is cautionary, and not concerning our national health. But about the dangers of an ever-consolidating media. Per The Insider, it's the American dream itself that will go up in smoke if we don't maintain a truly free press.
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