An insider story focuses on characters whose worldviews and goals are defined by their place in a particular society or part of it. Their main conflicts often involve subverting the structures that define their world, or at least navigating them while trying to accomplish their own goals. For example, the Star Wars movie The Force Awakens features both an insider hero and villain. Both Finn, a former storm trooper who joins the Resistance, and Kylo Ren, who grew up in the bosom of the First Order, must wrestle with their moral quandaries.
Michael Mann’s 1999 film The Insider makes a thriller and expose out of how big tobacco’s long-running tissue of lies was finally exposed by investigative journalism. At its center stands Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), a producer for 60 Minutes, the CBS News program where a former tobacco scientist named Jeffrey Wigand spilled the beans. Bergman coaxes Wigand to talk and then works with reporter Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) to get the story. Eventually, they battle with CBS executives who are afraid to run it because a lawsuit could destroy the network.
The result is a methodical drama about moral imperatives that avoids car chases and sleazy sex scenes in favor of tense, taut character development. Thanks to excellent performances by Crowe and Pacino, as well as restrained direction and mature writing, the film succeeds at what few historical dramas do today — it holds audience attention on its own. It harkens back to an era when grown-up films like All the President’s Men, The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and The China Syndrome still regularly drew crowds and critical applause.