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Rating: Manifesting after a title like "Heat" (1995), probably one of the highest peaks of action films in recent decades, is no small burden, particularly when the following film travels on different tracks. "Insider" is an investigative drama, a sort of journalistic and documentary reportage made explicit through the repeated use of the handheld camera.
The sixth big-screen effort by Michael Mann was born from an article by Marie Brenner that appeared in "Vanity Fair" and caused a scandal in the United States: one of the major tobacco multinationals, Brown & Williamson, was accused of using chemicals in tobacco processing. Jeffrey Wigand (played by one of the most convincing Russell Crowes ever), a scientist at the company, pressured by journalist Lowell (Al Pacino), decides to reveal the dark secrets of B&W to CBS's "60 Minutes" program.
The Michael Mann of "Insider" is much more composed than usual and directs by continuing at the slow pace that was typical of the "pauses" in Heat. The almost suspended atmosphere, extremely emphasized by the splendid cinematography of Dante Spinotti, serves to set a story of lonely men, lost in sterile offices, the opposite of the metropolitan "space" that Mann has often brought to the cinema. Jeffrey Wigand is alone in facing what becomes a true "rite of passage" towards liberation from a burden that cost him his wife. Lowell Bergman is also alone, a journalist who has the duty to tell the truth. Thus, "Insider" becomes a work of revelation, a film that stages the need for free information and the "subversive" power of those mass media that substantially channel public opinion. A concept that Lowell brands with the phrase "the press is free...for those who own it." The enemy is internal and must be fought. The all-American need to look for an "external enemy" is completely overturned in Mann's film: this time, the adversary is among us, in our homes (the bullet in the mailbox). To win, one must tell the truth at all costs, even against the great power plays of the information bodies.
Far from the action impulses of past films, "Insider" is today a unique work in Mann's filmography, his most intimate and "thoughtful" film. This doesn't prevent the Chicago director from venturing into the "compositional terrorism" of breaking the 180-degree rule, serving to express that sense of insecurity and bewilderment that is characteristic of the two protagonists. Mann uses space to render men insignificant, lost in the ocean or on silent, deserted golf courses. Every shot by Michael Mann serves to build a framework around the characters in a proliferation of close-ups that finds sublimation in the "Mannian sinthome", the side-profile shot over the right shoulder of the characters, a recurring theme in Mann's future cinema. Through this device, the American filmmaker eliminates the emotional distance between viewer and film figure (Wigand) and shows us exactly what Russell Crowe also sees. It is the visual and compositional architecture of a film that does not trivialize any sequence: if in the cinematic debut "Thief" (1981), Mann used slow motion to emphasize violence (in the manner of Peckinpah, one of his mentors), in "Insider" the device serves to carve the gaze of a daughter towards a finally "free" father that reflects in his own image on TV.
The directorial choices shape a river-film that Mann manages with his usual technical expertise, attentive to the smallest details. The filmic scheme provides Mann with the answers to create a work that enters and exits from various genres but above all has the strength to portray two opposite and complementary characters, following the same "experiment" as "Heat." A multifaceted film, "Insider" remains an almost standalone work in the director's filmography, one of his most "poised" and self-reflective chapters. Another piece of that coherent aesthetic mosaic, even before thematic, that Michael Mann has been pursuing for years and of which the latest "Blackhat" is yet another example.
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