Product: The Insider [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 1.0
The Time Machine
Another exammple of Hollywood's view of the world. As an ex-smoker, the significance of this drama eludes me. I mean its not as if nobody has the slightest inkling that cigarettes are bad for you and addictive and you shouldn't smoke. But apparently the responsiblity does not lie with the individual - to get a grip on him or herself and not smoke - but with the big tobacco companies who are made to seem as if they are preying on a hapless populace who regard them with tragically misguided childlike trust and reverence. From the gravity of this movie a newly-arrived space alien who wandered into a theater and pointed his antennae at the screen would get the impression that we earthlings are very much like the eloi and morlocks of HG Wells' future world. The eloi smokers - lets call them the smokeloi - go around in a beatific daze with a cigarette hanging out of the side of their mouths at all times. They are not eaten by the tobacco-producing morlocks - lets call them the philmorlocks - but presently some of them develop a whacking cough. The time traveller witnesses this situation and it does not occur to him to ask the smokeloi why they don't just stop smoking. Instead, he suggests that the smokeloi should sue the philmorlocks for everything they own - which in this case is plenty. The scene fades out with the thus incited smokeloi still smoking but now jumping up and down chanting slogans, holding placards with cigarettes hanging out of the side of their mouth. They buoy the time traveller aloft like he's stage diving at an REM concert and as the light hits his face in those last few moments you can't quite tell if he's supposed to be Al Pacino or Russell Crowe and come to think of it you don't really care.