Gripping All The Way Through

Rating: 9/10 (23 March 2001)

There's hardly a flaw in this true account of the 60 Minutes expose of a tobacco industry cover-up.
Al Pacino is brilliant as Lowell Bergman, the 60 Minutes producer who struggles to convince former tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand (equally brilliantly played by Russell Crowe) to grant an interview in the face of the industry's attempts to silence him, and then has to fight CBS management to put the interview on the air. This is just a marvelous film.
From the beginning scenes of the setting up of an interview between Mike Wallace (played by Christopher Plummer, who does a valiant job in a difficult role, playing someone as well known as Wallace) and an Arab sheik involved with the Hezbollah movement we get a sense of the point to come: that dealing with Middle East terrorists is a lot safer than taking on the tobacco industry! We're also hit right off the top by the irony underlying everything. Wigand, who worked as a senior executive for a tobacco company, is a health care specialist with a seriously asthmatic daughter.
The first part of the movie plays like a spy thriller, as it focuses on the threats made against Wigand and family to silence him, and the pressure this puts on his family life as we literally see the man begin to crumble under the pressure. The focus of the second half shifts to Bergman's desperate attempts to get Wigand's interview broadcast after everything he has risked to blow the whistle. The battle between Bergman and CBS, also under pressure from the industry not to air the story, and vulnerable due to the network's impending sale, is well portrayed.
This movie is absolutely worth the watching. It is vaguely ominous as we're confronted by the power not just of the tobacco industry, but of big business in general. Definitely a 9 out of 10.