Responses to this message:
Quite impressive in general, and miles beyond his recent pitiful effort in the horrible "Mystery, Alaska." His performance toward the end was enough to make my "date" for the evening misty and even got me a little. You wouldn’t expect to find that much emotion in what was basically a corporate lawyer movie, but this one FAR exceeded the efforts by John Travolta in last year’s "A Civil Action" -- almost none of the pain felt forced in "The Insider," unlike "Action." And I’m sure Godmother will want to know this: Al Pacino was on fire, but really, how much different was it from his other acting performances? No subtly in this movie -- just the way I like it!
In all honesty, describing the complete plot of this movie would take up a good page or two -- it’s that complicated, so I’m not really going to try. But in capsule form: Crowe plays Jeffery Wigand, a doctor who was fired from his director of research position at Brown & Williamson, one of the 7 largest tobacco companies in the U. S (yes, this whole story is true, and I’ll be damned if you didn’t at least hear about the end result of this matter, which wasn’t really covered by the film). The reasons he was fired, you just need to see the movie to come to a complete understanding, but Wigand’s primary background issue is that prior to taking the 7 figure a year position, he worked for health-oriented companies. So naturally after working for the tobacco industry for 3 years, his conscience started bothering him. Anyway, Lowell Bergman (Pacino) is a producer for "60 Minutes," and someone tips him off that Wigand might have some important information for him about a story he’s working on. Long story short, Bergman discovers that Wigand has more information than he was even looking for, some extremely explosive information that could cripple the tobacco industry, who up to that point had never lost a lawsuit. However, they have to get around the confidentiality agreement Wigand signed with the tobacco company in lieu of his severance agreement, which he needs to keep his family going while he’s out of work. The film leads us to believe that the tobacco industry starts threatening his life and his family’s if he talks. Just a quick wrap-up (it’s a HELL of a lot more complicated than this, but I’ll give away the whole movie if I keep going): Wigand is asked to testify for Mississippi in their lawsuit against the tobacco industry, and CBS Corporate fights CBS News from airing the Wigand interview because of financial fears related to a potential buyout and some sort of lawsuit possibility whose exact name I’ve forgotten, but I’m sure Richard and Roy will have a field day explaining it when the forum goes up. The real heart of the film is how Wigand’s family life falls apart because of the good he does for the country (of course, that’s debatable), and how Bergman’s career falls apart in his attempt to save both Wigand and his own integrity.
Like I said, all of this is complicated, which probably explains the 2 1/2 hour run time. My "date" started getting fidgety on me, but I thought the movie moved fast enough that it wasn’t entirely a problem. Director Michael Mann got a little experimental on us, going back down the path of his "Miami Vice" series, with a lot of fancy focusing and other types of cinematography he didn’t use in his first major feature "Last of the Mohicans" (mostly because that movie was a period piece and that sort of stuff doesn’t belong in a period piece) but was evident in his last feature film "Heat" (also with Pacino -- I guess they like working together!). Where Mann productions always excel the most are their soundtracks (I liked "Mohicans’ so much I bought it, which is a rarity!), and this one is definitely an effective one, with just the right amount of emotional nuances at the right places.
The main area this movie suffered was that "current news" angle -- that is, although I obviously did not know every detail of the events depicted, I knew enough that I was not one bit surprised by the ending or much of what I saw. I have read the article it was based on -- do yourself a favor and DON’T read it before watching the movie if you haven’t already read it.
Oscar nominations for acting, maybe (besides Pacino and Crowe, Christopher Plummer was magnificent and convincing as Mike Wallace, Diane Verona was over the top as Wigand’s distraught wife, Gina Girshon was hanging around as a CBS lawyer, Rip Torn had one powerful scene, and Hallie Kate Eisenberg played one of Wigand’s daughters. Who is Eisenberg, you ask? Think ANNOYING PEPSI COMMERCIALS. Curly haired chick, sounds like Aretha Franklin sometimes and Joe Pesci other times)-- profitable, I doubt it. Not that interesting of a topic for most movie watchers, and it’s filled with lawyer language. But I thought it was pretty good myself. Not great -- not Best Picture nomination worthy, but it’s definitely one of the better efforts I’ve seen this year and I learned some stuff. On a semi-personal note, as most of you know, I work for an ABC affiliate, and Disney-arm Buena Vista did make this film, which that fact alone made a story about CBS News controversial. So take this movie with a grain of salt.
Responses to this message:
Post a response to this discussion thread