4. The Insider
Pacino team-ups have a vast spectrum, and one certainly larger than any other actor I can think of. You can get your classics where he's opposite Brando, De Niro, and Cazale, or you can get
Jack and Jill or caught stringing Chris O'Donnell into his greatness (though to be fair, I'm one of those saps for everything in
Scent of a Woman). And while my favorite personal team-up with Pacino comes with his partner in crime John Cazale in
Dog Day Afternoon, there's practically no contest than Russell Crowe in
The Insider for second place. Michael Mann's film crackles with performance excitement, and would have easily taken home the statuettes for its Oscar nominations had it been set in a year that wasn't, you guessed it, 1999. If there's one thing Mann is good at, it's finding that perfect kinetic balance between leads (
Heat, Collateral), and
The Insider is no different. With Christopher Plummer, a real vet of the screen, pulling his own weight under these two, it's a movie that goes the extra mile and sets up another glowing entry for Mann's filmography. Sadly, the film didn't exactly live up to its expectations box-office-wise, and quite often gets forgotten. http://youtu.be/ZIjpP-XngKA