Early next year, Walt Disney Home Entertainment is releasing writer/director Michael Mann's The Insider on Blu-ray. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the intense, masterfully crafted drama stars Russell Crowe, Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer and Gina Gershon, and arrives on February 19, 2013.
The Insider recounts the chain of events that pitted an ordinary man against the tobacco industry and dragged two people into the fight of their lives. Pacino gives a powerful performance as veteran 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman and Crowe co-stars as the titular insider, former tobacco executive Dr. Jeffrey Wigand. When Wigand is fired by his employer -- one of the largest tobacco companies in the country -- he agrees to become a paid consultant for a story Bergman is working on regarding alleged unethical practices within the industry. But what begins as a temporary alliance leads to a lengthy battle as both men struggle to save their reputations. As they soon find out, Corporate America will use all legal means at its disposal to save a billion-dollar-a-year habit.
Exact technical specifications and special features have yet to be detailed.
There's no other way to say it: this is one of my favourite movies of all time. Whenever asked about my all-time favourite, I usually go with either this or LA Confidential. Hopefully the Blu-ray release will have more extras than the DVD.
Yep. This is really an "actor's" movie. If you want to see an example of A-list actors at the top of their game, completely committed to their craft, and completely in-tune with their director and each other, this is the one. Stress. Dread. Beauty. and Fragility. Amazing.
"Mike? Mike!?! Try Mr. Wallace" has got to be one of my favorite lines in any movie. Plummer totally kills this role, and I feel like saying that is doing an injustice to Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Bruce McGill, and every other actor that totally kills it too. Seriously underrated and underseen movie. Despite 7 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, almost nobody I know has even seen this movie, which is baffling to me because it is so damn good.
Everyone in this is incredible, and Russell Crowe deserved the Oscar nomination he received for it as well (probably deserved to win to, but that would be corrected the following year with Gladiator), but Christopher Plummer is the main reason to see this. His Mike Wallace is a performance for the ages.
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Merry freaking Christmas. This is one of my favorites of all time. Now, they just need to give it the Mann treatment with the bonus features, including a commentary from Mann himself.
Watchable, for the cast, but a HUGE, HUGE letdown as a follow-up to "Heat": the story just cries, "WHO CARES?!"
Kind of like when Fincher followed "Zodiac" with that horrible, horrible Benjamin Button fiasco.
Corporate America will stop at nothing to prevent its bottom lines from being affected. It took decades for people to grasp this about the tobacco industry, how much longer will it take for people to grasp the same is true of the pharmaceutical industry, the biotech industry and the mainstream media?
Happy to see the enthusiasm/love in the comments (so far . . .). Have been waiting for this BD for a long time. Absolutely outstanding film which, dare I say, I like just as much if not even more than HEAT.
GOD DAMN, finally! Fuck me dead, I can't even remember what life was like before waiting for this to come out on Blu-Ray so I can throw away one of the few (less than a hundred) DVDs I have left. The best moment for me in this, is when Pacino sitting at the conference table and he can't fucking believe what he hears and looks puzzled, then says, "Is this... Alice In Wonderland?" HAHAHA
