The first half of The insider is a drama steeped in paranoia in which its whistleblower protagonist’s growing obligation to share with the world the disturbing truths he knows about the tobacco industry is met with death threats, deals from stifling non-disclosures, to nighttime break-ins, to court hearings. shakedowns and unsettling, cold visits from the FBI. Mann, who co-wrote The insiderThe screenplay by Eric Roth uses this section of the film to make viewers feel and understand how difficult it is to try to do the morally right and honest thing in modern corporate America. At every moment, Wigand’s life seems on the verge of not only falling apart, but potentially ending completely.

Mann makes this clear with countless haunting visuals, including one of Wigand opening his family’s mailbox to find a single bullet waiting inside. The director’s usual, instinctive editing rhythms are on full display throughout the film. The insiderThis is also the first half. The film alternately crawls and advances at a pace that only makes what Wigand is trying to do even more cumbersome, dangerous and impossible to manage and control.

While Crowe is allowed to beautifully portray both his character’s fear and quiet strength, Mann resists portraying him as an iconic hero. He is a normal man with a soft tone, an occasional stutter, and a tendency to lower his head and try to move around without being seen around the world. He and his wife, Liane (Diane Venora), are exactly as Pacino’s Lowell describes them at one point: “ordinary people under extraordinary pressure.” This only makes Wigand’s decision to go ahead with Lowell’s plan and record a 60 minutes special, revealing the full and corrupt truth of the tobacco industry in which he had made his living, all the more powerful.

His sound recording 60 minutes The interview with the program’s revered longtime presenter, Mike Wallace (an imposing Christopher Plummer), marks the moment when The insider leaves behind its first half led by Russell Crowe and enters its second dominated by Al Pacino. The film becomes not only a thriller about the difficulties of telling the truth, but of sharing it when Lowell’s exuberance over Wigand’s interview is quickly killed by his superiors at CBS, who decide to delay the segment’s broadcast complete. They do so out of fear of a lawsuit from Wigand’s former employer that could threaten the viability of CBS’ upcoming sale to Westinghouse, a fact that Lowell rightly denounces with appropriate indignation and condemnation in a office confrontation that gives Pacino one of the most memorable moments. , fierce and breathtaking monologues from throughout his storied career.

Lowell realizes how close Wigand’s interview comes to being completely killed. He is confronted with the utter horror of the contemporary American news industry, controlled by big business. The nauseating feeling that The insider » provokes when Lowell reveals how much money his bosses will potentially lose if the sale of CBS to Westinghouse is torpedoed by a costly external lawsuit has only grown more powerful over the past 25 years. A world in which corporate interests govern the very American news cycle is no longer a foreign concept to us, but Pacino’s Lowell is understandably disgusted by this reality. “You pay me to go get guys like Wigand – to draw him, to trust us, to get him on TV,” he roars, emphasizing how much trust is necessary for sources like the Crowe’s whistleblower stands out. at stake in the first place.

When he’s essentially fired and forced to go on vacation, The insider follows Pacino’s headstrong news producer as he fights his way through the back channels of the journalism world to broadcast Wigand’s full interview. All the while, Mann keeps his eyes on Wigand, who sinks into an even worse abyss of despair when he discovers how depressing and close to failure the interview he put his entire life on the line for is. never be released. Wigand’s grief, as well as the debt Lowell feels to his source, are rendered with vivid clarity in The insiderThe third act of, in which the film’s heroes and its viewers are forced to confront the fact that few people today seem genuinely interested in telling the truth and doing the right thing when it comes at a potential cost to them .

In the end, of course, Lowell succeeded in broadcasting her Wigand’s version 60 minutes episode. However, while this moment is given the emotional depth it deserves for Crowe’s beleaguered man, The insider stops short of a full, upbeat celebration. Following the episode’s release, Pacino’s Lowell informs Plummer’s Mike that he has quit. 60 minutes. When Mike expresses dismay at Lowell’s decision, the disillusioned Pacino reporter responds, “What should I tell a source about the next tough story?” “Stay with us, everything will be fine – maybe”? No… What was broken here cannot be put back together.

It’s a bittersweet conclusion that comes out of nowhere and yet The insider wins completely. In its final moments, the film expands its reach beyond the news industry to America and the world at large. What do we do when our trust in the fundamental institutions of our society is shaken and broken? It is a pause which, like The insider» notes the co-responsible sadly, cannot simply be “reconstituted”. It is an existential loss that encourages us to lose our integrity and completely abandon our sense of honesty, and it is a loss that The insider heads with formal confidence and righteous anger for two and a half hours.

The film therefore emerges as something much larger and more vital than a simple thriller about the making of a single news segment. This is as impeccably crafted a drama as any Mann has ever made, and its themes seem to have only deepened and sharpened in the 25 years since its release.

The insider is available to rent on all major digital platforms.