The Insider (1999)

 

Watching this in 2025 is a trip. Seems like 100 years have passed instead of 25. The pace of news is agonizingly slow as people send faxes, ship documents, consult The Yellow Pages, use pay phones, and read newspapers. Everything is outdated. 

Michael Mann’s style feels slow and clunky in this slow burner. It’s white collar legal stuff, so Mann relies on jump cut racoons and shadowy golfers to try and make it exciting. Doesn’t really work. 

Maybe the subject of nicotine and tobacco companies was a bigger deal back then, but the story seems insignificant in the face of the current tsunami of malfeasance and corruption washing over us on a daily basis. Stretched over 2 ½ hours, the film wasn’t very riveting. 

Rating: D+