| 100 |
New York Daily News
May be the best movie of the year.
|
| 100 |
Rolling Stone
With it's dynamite performances, strafing wit and dramatic provocation, The Insider offers Mann at his best -- blood up, unsanitized and unbowed.
|
| 100 |
Salon.com
A marvelous ensemble cast and all the visceral impact and moment-to-moment tension of a fine thriller, together with the distinctive visual style of an art film.
|
| 100 |
Christian Science Monitor
Excellent acting, a stirring screenplay, and crisply intelligent directing make this fact-based movie a great human drama as well as a riveting and revealing look at crucially important social issues.
|
| 91 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
It's a terrific movie -- intelligent, magnificently acted, highly compelling as a thriller, and downright scary in its implications for the corporate-run world of the new millennium.
|
| 90 |
Slate
A big, overlong, and rather unwieldy piece of storytelling, but the story it has to tell is so vital that it cuts through all the dramaturgical muddiness. It's a terrific muckraking melodrama--it will get people fuming.
|
| 90 |
LA Weekly
Has the glorious look and immaculate technique we expect from Mann, along with a wealth of superb secondary performances.
|
| 90 |
Newsweek
Reveals a chilling reality: how hard it is to tell a simple truth when big business doesn't want it told.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
A well-orchestrated nightmare that keeps you on edge until the very end.
|
| 90 |
Mr. Showbiz
Richard T. Jameson
For two hours and 35 minutes it is absolutely riveting.
|
| 90 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
Is still sleek, gripping entertainment with a raw-nerved, changeable camera style that helps to amplify its meaning.
|
| 90 |
Time
The viewer almost has to be a journalist--or a good editor--to sniff out the meat under all the fat.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
A dead-on tale of corporate power, courage, cowardice and how we live.
|
| 90 |
Chicago Reader
Almost cagily creating understated drama from high-stakes reality.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
At its best, hard-hitting grown-up cinema (rare these days) and a movie blessed with a villain (Big Tobacco) for which all gloves can be removed and heaved into the next county.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Power to absorb, entertain and anger.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
This is a first-class muckraking melodrama: an admirable picture.
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
A big, bold movie that gets at undeniable truths about the way no one, no matter how powerful, is immune from manipulation.
|
| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
Earnest, smart, handsome, well-acted and made with mastery.
|
| 80 |
Village Voice
May be pumped-up, but it's rarely boring
|
| 80 |
Dallas Observer
The final product is great populist entertainment and may even leave audiences with a feeling of comfort, however fleeting, in the knowledge that corrupt corporations don't always win
|
| 80 |
Film.com
It's great that this movie exists.
|
| 80 |
TNT RoughCut
Overall, a solid piece of film that not only entertains but also educates.
|
| 75 |
New York Post
A beautifully shot, well-acted movie that manages to make a complicated, real-life story without much drama feel like a thriller.
|
| 75 |
Baltimore Sun
Tells an important story about a story that might never have been told at all.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Few American directors drive this wedge between mind and gut as masterfully as Michael Mann.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Pacino and Crowe are at their best, but the supporting cast also shines.
|
| 75 |
Entertainment Weekly
A good but far from great movie because it portrays truth telling in America as far more imperiled than it is.
|
| 75 |
San Francisco Examiner
A meticulously assembled dramatization of a grossly controversial moment in TV history.
|
| 70 |
TV Guide
An exciting dramatization of the strange events that marked the turning of the legal tide against Big Tobacco, and a particularly dark moment in the annals of CBS News.
|
| 70 |
Variety
A borderline pretentious, overly inflated picture.
|
| 70 |
Film.com
The insider's view of celebrity in The Insider grabs the spotlight from the real story of Wigand's courage.
|
| 63 |
Boston Globe
A big, dark juggernaut of a movie about a big, dark juggernaut of a subject.
|
| 50 |
Austin Chronicle
It's all a little too polished, a little too smug to be ranked up there as one of the great journalism films.
|
