Michael Mann: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best
4. The Insider
On paper, The Insider doesnt exactly scream compelling cinema: at two and a half hours in length and a plot involving corporate malfeasance on the part of Big Tobacco, one would be forgiven for being more than a little wary of what Mann is offering up here. That The Insider is arguably the most purely suspenseful film of his career, then, says just as much about Manns directorial genius as it does the deceptively compelling nature of the central story of research biologist and full-fledged whistleblower Jeffrey Wigands 1996 fight to expose Brown and Williamson for illegally introducing chemicals into cigarettes to increase their addictiveness. It also doesnt hurt that The Insider comes fully loaded with two fearless performances in the form of Al Pacino, playing CBS reporter Lowell Bergman, and Russell Crowe, who plays Wigand with an fervency thats equal parts anxious, intimidated, yet admirably resolute. Theres also the typically terrific cinematography by Dante Spinotti, who subtly injects the films office scenes with an unusually effective sense of foreboding, and a score by Pieter Bourke and Lisa Gerrard that suitably steers the film from one nerve-rattling encounter to the next.
