Tag: Bruce McGill

The Insider (1999)

The Insider (1999)

Mann’s finest film is a chilling breakdown of the insidious strength of corporations

Director: Michael Mann

Cast: Al Pacino (Lowell Bergman), Russell Crowe (Dr Jeffrey Wigand), Christopher Plummer (Mike Wallace), Diane Venora (Liane Wigand), Philip Baker Hall (Don Hewitt), Lindsay Crouse (Sharon Tiller), Debi Mazar (Debbie De Luca), Stephen Tobolowsky (Eric Kluster), Colm Feore (Richard Scruggs), Bruce McGill (Ron Motley), Gina Gershon (Helen Caperelli), Michael Gambon (Thomas Sandefur), Rip Torn (John Scanlon), Cliff Curtis (Sheikh Fadlallah)

For decades we persuaded ourselves smoking was problem-free. Then, when we finally decided sucking tar into your lungs several times a day probably didn’t go hand-in-hand with good health, Big Tobacco bent over backwards to argue they didn’t believe for one minute nicotine was actually addictive. This lie – they were improving the hit to increase the customer base – was blown upon by corporate whistle blower, and former B&W employee, Dr Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe).

But the battle over the reporting of the story also exposed the fault-lines in corporate-owned media companies, as Wigand’s 60 Minutes interview was canned by a CBS network terrified of legal action imperilling a corporate sale, much to the fury of crusading producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) who spent months bringing Wigand in only to see him brushed aside. The Insider charts these two stories merging into each other: the deadly campaign of intimidation and smears against Wigand, segueing into the caving of CBS in the face of legal threats with Bergman left furious, betrayed and turning his campaigning fire against his own employers.

This all comes grippingly to life in Michael Mann’s superb slice of All the President’s Men inspired-reportage, turning this 1996 TV-and-business scandal into a sleek, intelligent thriller that takes a chilling look at how corporate America rigs the game in its own favour with impunity. The Insider is as rightfully furious at the dirty-tricks and menace of the tobacco companies, as it is at the subtly insidious way corporate interests pollutes news reporting. It does this while also presenting its two heroes as flawed men with more in common than they might think: competitive alpha males, both prone to taking rash, destructive actions in fits of head-strong self-righteousness, caring about their own moral code over the needs of others.

The Insider splits into two clear acts: the agonising decision of Wigand to blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance, in the face of immense personal and professional pressure and Bergman’s subsequent struggle to deliver on his word and get Wigand’s confession on air. The first half offers the more traditional heroics – and the more overt hero-and-villain structure, but increasingly I find the second half, of news shows being dictated to by their paymasters more-and-more unsettlingly prescient, becoming increasingly relevant the older the film gets.

But that first half makes for a compellingly tense pressure-cooker view. It’s powered by an excellent performance by Russell Crowe (effortlessly convincing as someone twenty years older, and collecting his first Oscar nomination). Crowe makes Wigand principled but prickly, brave but confrontational and at times frustratingly self-righteous. His moral qualms are finally sharpened into action his fury at the blunt-intimidation from B&W’s sinisterly avuncular CEO (a masterful cameo from Michael Gambon – one of the great single-scene performances in movies) and its implication that he cannot trusted to stick to his NDA. Wigand barely involves his wife (a tightly-wound Diane Venora) in his decisions, only mentioning his dismissal in passing and deciding to appear on 60 minutes (a decision that will shatter their lives) unilaterally.

But Wigand also has higher motives. He wants to be able to look his daughters in the eye, having sold-out to burnish the dirty-deeds of B&W with his scientific skills. He’s rightly affronted by the lies Big Tobacco has sold the public and undergoes enormous sacrifices (financial, marital, professional, legal, death threats and a public smear campaign) to see things through. Mann’s cool mix of starkness and shadows, full of drained out colours and greys, is perfect for a world where Wigand is shadowed by strangers at a driving range, receives bullets in his mailbox and searches late at night for who has left footprints in his garden. Crowe superbly conveys a man acting out of an increasing sense of moral imperative, struggling desperately to hold himself together under immense pressure.

This section of the film – especially with its clear antagonist – plays as a superb personal and political thriller, Mann expertly conveying lurking menace. In 1999 the second half of the film, the struggle to actually broadcast Wigand’s interview, was often seen as slightly underwhelming. But actually it shows a different type of danger: less overt and heavy-handed corporate power with its legal injunctions and bullying FBI guys hoping for a cushy retirement job with the corporation, more how these corporate masters assert control in quiet, less direct ways to decide what we hear or see.

Our journalists have no fear when confronting criminals or terrorists – The Insider’s prologue establishes this with Bergman and host Mike Wallace not flinching in the face of gun-toting Hezbollah fighters guarding the Sheikh they have arranged to interview. But they face far greater threats to their integrity when confronted with lawyers and corporate directors (effectively embodied by Gina Gershon and Stephen Tobolowsky as uncaring suits) whose threats are indirect and insidious. Wigand’s interview could imperil the sale of CBS and the bonus of the corporate suits, and in that scenario journalist principles can go hang. Christopher Plummer is, by the way, superb as the charismatic Wallace, who caves to pressure then convinces himself he hasn’t, a super-star of the airwaves who loses part of his wider integrity trying to protect his position.

And doesn’t the idea that corporations can squeeze the life out of journalistic stories feel even more chilling today? After all, virtually every single news outlet out there is owned by a major business, all with their own agendas. Can we really believe they’ve not all made calls on gets reported, based on what their shareholders might think? Mann’s film skilfully – and rather chillingly – shows how quickly they can re-work the agenda. It leaves Lowell Bergman raging (as only Al Pacino can) against the betrayal of trust he’s being forced to make towards Wigand.

Crowe’s pressure-cooker performance stole many of the headlines on release but The Insider also benefits from an excellent Pacino performance. Utterly committed to his principles and – just like Wigand – utterly unwilling to compromise them even an inch, no matter the cost, Bergman will pick up the windmill-tilting banner, and charge with it at his own paymasters. No one can rip through speeches quite like Pacino, but he gives Bergman a real genuineness, grounded in a fundamental decency, whose righteous anger is underpinned with world-weary disbelief that it’s come to this.

It grounds an excellently studied breakdown of a journalistic turf war. The Insider plays like All the President’s Men, if Woodward and Bernstein had been spiked after they nailed the story. Mann demonstrates the influence in The Insider’s crisply immersive photography that employs depth of frame and gyroscopic deep-focus, as well as in the crisp editing and the film’s mesmerising emersion in the complex details of building a story. Combine that with a gripping conspiracy thriller on the machinations of ruthless corporations and The Insider makes for a compelling film.

Lincoln (2012)

Daniel Day-Lewis gives on the great transformative performances as Lincoln

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis (Abraham Lincoln), Sally Field (Mary Todd Lincoln), Tommy Lee Jones (Thaddeus Stevens), David Strathairn (William Seward), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Robert Lincoln), James Spader (WN Bilbo), Hal Holbrook (Preston Blair), John Hawkes (Robert Latham), Jackie Earle Haley (Alexander Stephens), Bruce McGill (Edwin Stanton), Tim Blake Nelson (Richard Schell), Joseph Cross (John Hay), Jared Harris (Ulysses S Grant), Lee Pace (Fernando Wood), Peter McRobbie (George Pendleton), Gloria Reuben (Elizabeth Keckley), Jeremy Strong (John Nicolay), Michael Stuhlbarg (George Yeaman), David Costible (James Ashley), Boris McGiver (Alexander Coffroth)

It took me three viewings until I felt I got Lincoln. Previously – in the cinema and the first time at home – I respected it. I admired the skill with which it was assembled. But I had found it hard to see it as much more than a critically acclaimed civics lesson, Spielberg at his most prestige. Returning to it the third time with the pressure well and truly off, suddenly I discovered a film I’d never seen before, an intensely dramatic telling of the perilous struggle to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery. A vibrant, beautiful and surprisingly intense story of how close Congress came to vetoing it. What had seemed a stuffy museum piece, instead came to life as a dramatic piece of cinema. It goes to show you should never be afraid to give something another go. Or two.

This biopic of Lincoln goes down a very modern route of avoiding covering the Great Man’s entire life. Instead it zeroes in on little more than a crucial month. It’s January 1865 – in what we know are the final months of the President’s life – and Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) confronts a terrible choice. Civil war has torn America apart for year and peace may be on the horizon. But Lincoln fears a reformed America, with all its Southern slave states back in the fold, will find a way to end his Emancipation Proclamation and restore slavery to its height. To prevent this, Congress must ratify the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution ending slavery. But, with many in Congress worried that such an Amendment will end any chance of peace, Lincoln is in a terrible position. Should he sacrifice peace for abolition? Or vice versa? Either way, it will be a no-holds barred fight on the floors of Congress.

Spielberg’s film is near perfect in its shooting and editing, while its historical detail is brilliantly on-point. You couldn’t fault a moment of its making. However, what makes the film a success is the director’s skilful ability to combine graceful (even stately) old-fashioned film-making expertise, with a truly compelling sense of the passions and dangers we face when democracy is in action. And the overwhelming tension when the stakes are high and we have no guarantees of the end result. Another film – the stately civics lesson I once took the film for – would have shown the passage of the bill as a Whiggish inevitability, a progress filled march to a better world.

Lincoln isn’t like that. This is a film that shows politics then and politics now ain’t that different. For every principled man, there a dozen looking out for the main chance, marking time or who are too scared to worry about right and wrong. The Amendment is delivered not by impassioned oratory from the President. It’s carried by skilled floor management and the employment of a trio of political lobbyists with briefcases stuffed with cushy job offers in the rebuilt America.

Votes are brow-beaten out of people, threats and persuasion are used in equal measure. There is no winning people over with poetic oratory. At one point, Lincoln makes a simple and heartfelt plea for one congressmen to do the right thing: the guy votes against him. One of the film’s moments of triumph sees fervent abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens refuse to be provoked into expressing his true views on the floor, instead offering a statement that he does not believe in equality “in all things”, knowing any other answer will be used to build opposition against the bill. Is there any other film in American politics where one of the biggest cheer moments is one of our heroes compromising and spinning his true views into something far less threatening?

It’s all part of the film’s demystification of American history as not being something made from marble, but instead being real and true. If anything though, this sense of realism – of danger and the very real possibility of defeat – makes the final vote (a long sequence that almost plays out a congress vote in real time) both far more dramatic and also surprisingly moving. Because we appreciate every step of the backroom handshakes, fights, compromises and (let’s be honest) corruption and shady deals that got us here. And, more than anything, the film has made clear Lincoln is willing for this brutal war (the horrors of which, both in battle and bloody aftermath, intrude at key points in the film) to go on for as long as it takes, to ensure this Amendment.

Lincoln is the heart of the film: and it’s almost impossible to state how central Daniel Day-Lewis is to the film’s success. This is an extraordinary performance. I don’t think you can understate how venerated Lincoln is in the American memory. With his distinctive features and a permanent memory of him sitting like a marble God in the centre of Washington, it’s hard for many to imagine that this was ever a real man. But Day-Lewis has turned in a performance here that transforms Lincoln into a living, breathing man but never once compromises his greatness.

From the voice (a wispy lightness, a million miles from the deep, Shakespearean accent you would expect – and entirely accurate) to the ambling walk, to the film’s embracing of Lincoln’s eccentric monologing, his love of whimsy and jokes, his autodidact passion for language, his warmth and love for his family – and his righteous anger when frustrated by those who cannot see the big picture – this is extraordinary. Day-Lewis is compelling in a way few actors can be. His Lincoln is superbly human. Every moment is beautifully observed, but this is so much more than an actor’s tricks. His Lincoln is someone you can come out of the film convinced that he was talking to you, that you understand him as a human being not a cipher. I felt I knew and understood Lincoln more from watching this film than I ever had from a history book. It’s breathtaking.

Of course it inspires everyone else in the cast to give their best. The at times difficult marriage between Lincoln and his wife gives some wonderful material for Sally Field (easily her finest performance in decades). Mary Todd Lincoln is aware she will always be a disappointment for her husband as a partner, but equally feels that her public mourning for this lost child speaks of a deeper humanity than her husband. Loyal if questioning, she’s also abrupt and clumsy enough at times to be a liability.

Tommy Lee Jones is exceptional as Thaddeus Stevens, prickly, difficult but also morally pure (the film has helped rediscover the unjustly overlooked Stevens). Previous Lincoln performers Strathairn and Holbrook give very good support. James Spader is great fun as colourful lobbyist. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is all restricted ambition as Lincoln’s son. Jared Harris shines in a few scenes as Grant. Gloria Reuben has a few beautiful moments as Mary’s confidante Elizabeth Keckley.

Lincoln is a film shot with all the prestige of an American Merchant-Ivory, in love with the power of democracy. But it’s also open-eyed on how a system like America’s works, and how perilous delivering “the right thing” can be. Emotional and engrossing, it’s powered above all by a towering sublime performance by Daniel Day-Lewis who might as well be the 16th President reborn. It took me three viewings to see the richness here – but I am so glad I stuck it out.

Collateral (2004)

Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx take a long taxi ride in Michael Mann’s thriller Collateral

Director: Michael Mann

Cast: Tom Cruise (Vincent), Jamie Foxx (Max Durocher), Jada Pinkett Smith (Annie Farrell), Mark Ruffalo (Detective Ray Fanning), Peter Berg (Detective Richard Weidner), Bruce McGill (Frank Pedrosa), Irma P. Hall (Ida Durocher), Barry Shabaka Henley (Daniel Baker), Javier Bardem (Felix Reyes-Torrena)

Tom Cruise enjoys throwing us film-goers curveballs every now and again. In Collateral he pops up as a sociopathic hitman, grey of hair and suit (like a buzzcut, rampaging John Major) leaving bodies strewn about the place. It’s great to see him in Michael Mann’s lean, very enjoyable action thriller, looking as sleek and soulless as the rest of LA.

Cruise’s Vincent is a hitman in LA to knock off a list of targets. But how will he get from hit to hit? Why by hiring a taxi driver for a night: risk-averse dreamer Max (Jamie Foxx) who has been working “temporarily” as a taxi driver while he builds plans for his dream limo business for a mere 12 years. Max is thrilled to have a big spender in his car – until something goes wrong on hit #1 and a body lands on his cab. Max no has no choice but to assist Vincent – although Vincent ends up becoming more attached to Max than he might ever have imagined.

Mann shot his film on a high-definition video and it gives a very unique look at LA, really capturing the hazy yellows and cool blues of the city and giving everything in the picture a slightly grainier, starker look. But that would count for nothing if the story of the film wasn’t pretty good, and Collateral is a very effective action thriller, which doesn’t reimagine the genre but offers more than enough freshness to enliven the familiar elements it’s made up from. 

Its main assets (along with Mann’s cool, detached and pin-point sharp direction) are the performances of its two leads. Cruise is just about bang-on as a professional hitman, devoid of empathy, who finds surprising possibilities of friendship open in front of him. He’s a fascinating character, like someone who has spent so long studying people that he can just about replicate human reactions, without understanding the humanity behind them. Cruise’s obsessive preparation for his roles also help makes him flawlessly convincing as this lethal ubermensh.

Foxx however is just as good as a basically decent, friendly, low-key guy who is kidding himself that he is not drifting through life. It’s Max’s story we follow throughout the film – and it’s his sense of personal morality, his strict belief in right and wrong, that gives the film its dramatic force. Foxx also avoids undermining or laughing at Max, who is basically a man so buttoned up and cautious that (without a major push) he’ll clearly die of old age in that cab. 

These two characters thrown together have a curious chemistry – a sort of riff on the casual bonds that can develop between driver and passenger as they talk about their lives, views and interests. It’s not a friendship – certainly not in Max’s case – but it’s a strange sort of bond nevertheless. Vincent, you feel, hasn’t talked to many people like this – and while he’s still willing to threaten Max or put him at great risk, he still develops a strange protectiveness about him. It’s this quirky and different relationship that powers the film and finally makes it unique. This odd couple don’t overcome boundaries to become bosom friends, but they also don’t come together as fierce rivals. Instead they sort of work out a co-existence in that cab.

It’s the most interesting thing about a film that otherwise – to be honest – deals a pretty familiar deck with confidence. Sometimes the film plays its cards so well you overlook them – the first time I watched it, I was semi-surprised at the reveal of the final victim, but really it should be pretty obvious to anyone who has seen a movie before. The plot is full of moments like this that are played with a freshness – or with a cunning – that stops them from feeling familiar.

But that’s really what it is. The journey around LA from hit-to-hit is a familiar sounding idea. The encounters between Vincent and the targets are pretty familiar – the exception being a fascinating, and hard to read, encounter with Barry Shabaka Henley’s jazz player turned informant, which sizzles with tension – and the action scenes, while well staged, are the sort of shoot-outs we’ve seen before. Mann shoots them with a vibrant excitement, but it’s mostly B-movie stuff presented freshly.

What it comes down to is that relationship between those two characters, and the skill of director and actor in drawing out subtleties in performance. (Don’t listen by the way to the director’s commentary, which ruthlessly strips these subtleties away as Mann bangs on about heavy-handed, predictable backstories which thankfully don’t make it into the movie, but make it sound dumber than it is). Cruise and Foxx are both fantastic, Mann’s direction of this sort of icy-cold, impersonal, dangerous city is impeccable and the film itself doesn’t fail to entertain.