Video: The Insider / Mystery, Alaska

The Insider

Herald rating: * * * *

Running time: 158 mins

Rental: Now


Mystery, Alaska

Herald rating: * * *

Running time: 118 mins Rental: Now


Review: Ewan McDonald

Seen Gladiator three times and wondering how you're going to get through the weekend with no footy? Here you go, 4 1/2 hours of Russell Crowe. Beefcake (sort of) in one movie, beefy (very) in the other.

The Insider, for which Crowe deservedly won his Oscar nomination earlier in the year, sets out to show how Big Tobacco's lies were exposed by Fearless TV Journalists. It owes more than a little to All The President's Man, the story of how Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford saved the Land of the Brave ... sorry, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and the Washington Post exposed Richard Nixon and the White House dirty tricks campaigns.

As an American critic noted, "the movie is constructed like a jigsaw puzzle in which various pieces keep disappearing from the table." 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) hires ex-tobacco company scientist Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) to help with a story for the famous documentary show. He learns that Wigand has information which shows not only that nicotine is addictive (which the cigarette company presidents had denied under oath before Congress), but that additives were used to make it more addictive — and one of the additives was a known carcinogen.

But Wigand has signed a confidentiality deal with his former employers and Bergman — assisted by star journalist Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) — has to get around that promise if the truth is to be outed.

When 60 Minutes chief Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall), backed by Wallace, takes the network's advice to drop the story for fear of multi-billion-dollar lawsuits, it seems as if the scandal will be covered up once again. However, Hewitt finds a loophole: if threats, bluster and leaks won't work, he'll run a story about how he can't break the story.

You can rightly quibble about how once again Hollywood has twisted reality to make a better movie, that this wasn't quite the way that the story got out, but you can't argue with Pacino and Crowe's marvellous performances of men painted into corners and blasting their way out. And that in the end the Good Guys won.

More good guys in Crowe's other video this week, Mystery, Alaska, an ode to small-town values by David E. Kelley of The Practice, Chicago Hope, LA Law and (sigh) Ally McBeal.

In Mystery life revolves around the Saturday ice-hockey match that the local men and boys play on their pond. And take very seriously. When a former resident (Hank Azaria) writes an article for Sports Illustrated about what brilliant players they are, a network is soon promoting a game between the Mystery men and the New York Rangers professionals.

Crowe is the town sheriff and ageing hockey star who's booted upstairs to coach to make way for teenage star Stevie (Ryan Northcutt); Mary McCormack his wife. Lolita Davidovich is married to the mayor (Colm Meaney) but playing around with one of the team. Even Burt Reynolds turns up in beard and black overcoat as the local judge, strict husband and father. Mike Myers has fun with his Canadian accent as a TV commentator (director Jay Roach also made the Austin Powers movies.)

More characters, more stories than a whole season of The Practice, make for harmless fun. And I'm not going to tell you if the good guys win this one.