Gladiator takes on the tobacco barons

Rating: Null/10 (14 January 2001)

This is not an obvious, or an easy, subject for cinematic treatment  high-level whistle-blowing in the US tobacco industry  but, in the hands of accomplished director Michael Mann, the outcome is a compelling analysis of the nature of big business and media values in corporate America. Al Pacino gives another fine performance as CBS `60 Minutes' television producer Lowell Bergman, trying to maintain his old-fashioned radicalism while surviving the tyranny of the suits and protecting his source.

It is Russell Crowe, however, who sustains the two and a half hour movie as he portrays the former Brown & Williamson scientist, turned informant and science teacher, Jeffrey Wigand. I actually viewed `The Insider' after I saw `Gladiator' and it is astonishing that the same actor could have so ably taken on both eponymous roles. For the former, 34 year old Crowe takes on the persona of a man 18 years his senior by putting on 80 lb, while grey hair, glasses and sheer talent do the rest.
This true story has an uncompromising message: cigarettes are delivery devices for nicotine and the companies that manufacture them are deliberately trying to make users addicted to them. Sad, then, that Crowe himself is a smoker.