Live Life Team
When listing Pacino’s most famous roles, the easy picks are usually star turns “The Godfather” trilogy, “Scarface”, and “Dog Day Afternoon”. While I love each of these movies for different reasons, my favourite and the one I go back to over and over again is “The Insider”.
Pacino plays Lowell Bergman, a producer for CBS’s “60 Minutes”, who must find a way of airing an interview of Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a former executive for a major tobacco company and whistleblower of the addictive qualities of cigarettes.
From the first scene, Pacino establishes Bergman as someone who doesn’t screw around. He has the clout to pull Mike Douglas, one of Hollywood’s most infamous hotheads, aside and talk sense to him. Bergman has a knack—a gift—
for hearing what people are really saying and calling them on their bull. He is blunt, matter-of-fact, and highly intelligent. He is the perfect street-smarts contrast to Wigand’s bookish intellect. And yet they form a bond, held together by Wigand’s fierce loyalty to the truth, which inspires Bergman’s fierce loyalty to keeping his word, and getting Wigand’s truth on the air.
Pacino’s performance continues to grab me. Every time I watch “The Insider”, I pick up different nuances to the character and how Pacino makes him so real and such an inspiration. I find myself watching scenes without Pacino and I’m just waiting for him to come on screen. What a great actor—always leaves the audience begging for more.
