Al Pacino is the real John Wayne...

Rating: 8/10 (24 June 2000)

Or the Ronnie Reagan of the left. I mean this in both the positive sense that he is a cultural hero, and in the negative sense that he is a celluloid hero. I have seen so many Al Pacino movies that I feel not only that I know him, but that he is actually a character from my own life. I like him here as Lowell Bergman, a radical ex-Ramparts Magazine editor grown into middle age but still fighting the good fight from within the establishment of CBS and 60 Minutes. His hair still flies about, showing that he is a free soul who cares more about substance than appearance. (We realize that the dye job is a necessary concession to the media world in which he lives.) And the passion still burns bright in his dark eyes, and he's still as wiry as a teenager.
But is this history? Is this the truth about what happened with Jeffrey Wigand, big tobacco and CBS? Or this 'revisionist history' dressed up dramatically to make the good guys look good and the bad guys look bad? I wish I could say this is how big time journalism really works, and that we have been afforded a true view inside the system. But it's hard to tell where the truth leaves off and dramatic license takes over. We learned in journalism long ago that there is no real objectivity; that all is to some extent interpretive. In fact I recall a college text we used in the sixties with the (then) arresting title, 'Interpretive Journalism.' Today's text might be called 'Subjective Journalism' and tomorrow's 'The Age of Tabloid Journalism.'
Nonetheless, this is a very good movie. The script by Michael Mann and Eric Roth sparkles with the immediacy of today's headlines, and Mann's direction is clean, crisp and dramatically very sharp. Russell Crowe as Wigand, the biochemist who blew the whistle on big tobacco and lost his wife and children to divorce in the process, is excellent. His subtle and restrained interpretation of Wigand reminds me so much of those guys from my generation who opted for the security of the corporate structure, only in his case the misgivings got to him. Diane Venova is chilling in a small role as his wife, a house and home centered woman who leaves him because she doesn't think it's fair to subject her and the children to the dangers and financial uncertainties of his whistle-blowing activities. Wigand is the reluctant hero and she is the woman who did not stand by her man.
Christopher Plummer does a good job of playing 60 Minutes's Mike Wallace, who gets plenty of egg on his face here. He looks pathetic in the scene where he talks about what he will be remembered for. I'm sure Wallace is mad as hell about the portrayal, but I don't think anybody is going to sue the producers of this movie, since it is so popular and so much in tune with what most of us believe to be true. Gina Gershon appears briefly as a greedy bottom line lawyer who cares nothing about journalism or the ethics of journalism.
John Wayne fought the enemies of our culture on celluloid with true grit and an unwavering, if sometimes moronic, sense of what's right. Al Pacino does the same here, except our enemies have changed and what's right isn't so clear anymore and the war room has become the board room. The really melancholy thing is I guess I wanted to believe in John Wayne when I was a kid, and now as a middle aged man, I want to believe in Al Pacino and 60 Minutes. This movie helps.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)