The Insider (1999)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Thriller	Featurette
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	151:32
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (75:57)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Michael Mann
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Al Pacino Russell Crowe Christopher Plummer Diane Venora Philip Baker Hall Lindsay Crouse Debi Mazar
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$36.95	Music	Lisa Gerrard Peter Bourke

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.40:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired Hebrew	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    After looking over the internal report, Jeffrey advises Lowell that he has no problem discussing the content of the report, but he can't discuss any areas outside of the report because of a confidentiality agreement he has signed. This piques Lowell's curiosity as to what Jeffrey can't say.

    When Jeffrey's old company learns that he is talking to a 60 Minutes reporter, Jeffrey is called in for a meeting where he is basically threatened and asked to sign an even more restrictive confidentiality agreement in an effort to frighten him and stop him talking. This really annoys Jeffrey, since he had no intentions of disclosing any company secrets or breaking his confidentiality agreement.

    The rest of the story is about how Jeffrey's old company tries to stop him from talking. With superb acting by all the lead characters, this movie is pretty powerful stuff. The fact that it is based on actual events just makes it even more interesting.

Video

    The picture detail and sharpness can only be described as exemplary for both the foreground and background. Some type of low-level noise artefact is present at 100:22 - 100:27. What is strange about this artefact is that the scene is brightly-lit and only the grey building in the background is affected. No edge bleeding or excessive edge enhancement was ever noticed.

    The colour is excellent and has faithfully reproduced the original films' cinematography. The footage at around 40:30 takes on a green tinge which is because of the car's windscreen tinting and the colours exhibited in TV interview footage are skewed somewhat, but both of these effects were deliberate so in essence the colour and picture detail should be considered perfect.

    This transfer is almost totally grain free, with only three minor instances noticed; at 120:50, 123:40 and 136:50. No pixelization was seen.

    No MPEG artefacts were seen. There is some minor telecine wobble in the opening credits, but it is nothing to worry about. There isn't any aliasing as such, which is totally amazing since the picture is just so sharp and clear, but because of this sharpness you can see the lines that make up the picture structure on fine and sharply-contrasted objects, such as Russell Crowe's glasses and Al Pacino's desk phone at 105:30 - 105:39. There is some intentional hand-held camera-like footage, which is of equal quality to the rest of the movie, but it does shake a lot.

    There are quite a lot of small film artefacts. I would estimate that there is at least one every minute, but since they are almost always small they really don't disrupt the picture. This is the aspect of the transfer that was most responsible for stopping it from receiving a reference quality rating.

    This disc is an RSDL disc, with the layer change occurring at 75:57 in Chapter 17 on a scene change. There is a definite pause, but it is well placed. All things considered this is a very good layer change, even though it is easily spotted.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand throughout the movie, with only a couple of minor exceptions where the dialogue became a little harder to make out. The dialogue is perfectly integrated into the soundstage.

    No audio sync problems were noticed with this transfer. There is a brief dialogue drop-out at 56:51, but it sounded like a editing induced fault rather than a transfer one.

    Lisa Gerrard and Peter Bourke's musical score is fantastic. It really enhances the on-screen drama and tension.

    The soundtrack sounds fantastic, and sounds like it has loads of surround channel use, but this is actually not the case. The ambience actually comes from the superb sound separation in the front soundstage, which manages to create a totally convincing and enveloping sound field on many occasions with little or no additional information coming from the rear speakers. I was quite amazed at this and had to put my ear to the rear speakers on several occasions just to confirm that there was in fact little or no sound actually coming from the rear speakers. Afterwards, I put on The Matrix just to confirm that my system hadn't developed a fault!  There is still some very good surround channel use, but it is infrequent.

    The subwoofer is used frequently and superbly to add real depth to the music and effects.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Production Featurette (7:06 minutes)

• Theatrical Trailers for The Sixth Sense and Guenevere
• Inside A Scene - Includes location notes, script, notes for the actors and a link to the scene itself for the first scene between Russell Crowe and Al Pacino.
• Higher bit rate 448Kb/s Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

• Nothing

    The video transfer of this movie is superb, but is not reference quality because of the number of small film artefacts.

    The audio transfer is excellent.

    The extras are extremely limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall