What did you think of "The Insider"?   Good 79% 297   Bad 18% 69   Somewhere in between 2% 8 Total Votes   374

Verdict: More smoke than fire here, but Russell Crowe gives an Oscar-worthy performance.

Details: Starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe. Directed by Michael Mann. Rated R for profanity. 2 hours, 37 minutes.

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Review: "The Insider" is based on the true story of Jeffrey Wigand, a cigarette industry consultant whose career went up in smoke after he was fired by Brown & Williamson, the third-largest tobacco company in the country. The real sparks, however, flew at CBS.

After Wigand was cajoled by producer Lowell Bergman into going public with his allegations that his company's CEO had knowingly lied to a congressional committee about the hazards of nicotine, "60 Minutes" decided, under pressure from CBS corporate, not to air the segment in full. The show's resident star, journalist Mike Wallace, initially went along with management, then recanted. Bergman fumed and threatened.

The segment eventually aired in its entirety. In the meantime, however, Wigand, who'd risked his severance pay and benefits package, saw his life go down in flames. He lost his wife, his family and any lingering ties he might have had to his former profession. He became more than another out-of-work exec; he was a pariah. A whistle-blower.

Michael Mann's film, which already has the navel-gazing media industry blowing editorial smoke over its implications, accuracy and integrity, actually tells the story of two insiders. The first and far more effective is Wigand's.

Russell Crowe, the hunky, hot-tempered cop from "L.A. Confidential," has considerably deglamorized himself for the role, to the point of being virtually unrecognizable. He plays Wigand as a paunchy, puddin'-faced paranoid who may drink too much and suffer from authority problems, but also as someone who knows what he's talking about when he refers to the cigarette industry as a "nicotine delivery business."

Crowe finds every nuance, every nook and cranny of Wigand's anger and isolation, his self-righteousness and his self-sacrifice. It's an astonishing, Oscar-worthy performance, haunted by a stubborn man's self-destructive streak as well as by his unshakable integrity.

The second "insider" story concerns Bergman, played with a star's glamour and panache by Al Pacino. Bergman, who acted as a consultant on the movie after leaving CBS, is presented as a kind of latter-day "All the President's Men" Woodstein. A guy who left a radical magazine like Ramparts and moved into the sleek corridors of network news without selling out. As he tells one character, he still does "the tough stories."

Like Wigand, he learns firsthand what it's like to buck the system. To have to choose between conscience and career expediency. However, most of Bergman's "suffering" takes place at a lovely seaside cottage where he's been sent by his bosses to cool off. Or at fancy hotels where he's already chasing another story. You can't help but get the impression that the film is pandering to Pacino's star status. That it would've been a riveting picture instead of an interesting one if it had stuck with Wigand and left Bergman a secondary character.

But then, star quality is what fills the seats.

That and, perhaps, the notoriety that the film has already attracted. Wallace has been very public in his protests. Oddly, he should've waited until he saw the movie. As played with sleek confidence by Christopher Plummer (who somehow manages to look both nothing like and exactly like Wallace), the "60 Minutes" icon comes off rather well. His decision to go along with the higher-ups is one measured by experience and an understandably human investment in the program that will be his legacy. ("I don't plan to end my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio.") One wonders if Bergman might not have done the same thing if he were in Wallace's shoes.

Is "The Insider" true? Who knows. It's certainly the truth according to Bergman. Is it a good story? For the most part, especially when Crowe is onscreen. Still, the film could lose a good 20 minutes.

At the very least, it offers some serious food for thought on some serious issues. When Wigand is first approached by Bergman, he says, "I'm just a commodity to you. Something to put on between commercials." True enough. But what he should've realized was that he'd been a commodity since the day he signed on the dotted line with Brown & Williamson.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Cox News Service

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