Word: mannes
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...Pace is the film's largest failing; though a deliberate pace helped the first half succeed very admirably, it fails when the tensions are rising by not building to a climax. Mann's film slackens and almost sputters...
...With this film, Mann proves that he is at the top of his form as an actor's director. Mann's cameras work in intimate closeness with his actors. And the cast works well with Mann's studied technique, which forces them into ultra-realism under the camera's close scrutiny. But the astonishing character study that dominates the first half begins to unravel when the film, inexplicably, changes its focus from Wigand to Bergman. Just as Wigand is entering his darkest period, becoming psychologically unhinged, the film cuts away to Bergman and his struggles with the brass...
...greatest strength of the film is in its actors but in the last part of the film, Crowe's Wigand almost disappears, and Pacino's Bergman is given scenes full of moral posturing that are completely out of character. After weaving a difficult and astonishing narrative, Mann begins to lose the thread; he sacrifices complexity for black-and-white morality and substitutes shapeless confrontations for emotional depth...
...whole be less than the sum of its parts? In the case of The Insider, yes, it can be true. Although the film should garner nominations for Actor, Supporting Actor and Screenplay come Oscar time, I can't help but feel a little disappointed that Michael Mann's well-crafted film could have been a true contender, and instead came up short as an epic-that-almost...
...Before shooting The Insider, Michael Mann sent a draft of the screenplay to "60 Minutes" anchor Mike Wallace, who expressed concern about Mann's streamlining of actual events. Upset about being portrayed as floundering morally next to Bergman's shining knight, Wallace fumed, "oh, how fortunate I am to have Lowell Bergman's moral tutelage to point me down the shining path." Mann turned right around, and had Wallace's fictional counterpart spout the same line in his film...