When Dr. Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) made the statement above in a sworn deposition, it changed the tenor of the story for me. Everyone knows that smoking cigarettes is bad for you, but when the damage caused by smoking is exacerbated by chemically treated additives designed to affect the brain and central nervous system so that users become addicted, well that adds a whole new dynamic to this story of corporate complicity to prevent the truth from reaching the American public. I wasn't following this news event all that closely when it broke, but one didn't have to because most of the glaring headlines told the story. I do remember the bit about the 'nicotine delivery business' and it had the effect of sending chills up your spine when associated with the 'ammonia chemistry' Wigand also spoke about. For me, this film played out almost like an espionage thriller. You had the upper levels of corporate and media hierarchy entangled in a sophisticated legal dance designed to keep the truth from coming out. One has to credit the real Dr. Wigand for the courage and fortitude required to withstand the daily onslaught against his character and integrity. Russell Crowe turns in a skillfully conflicted performance of a family man on the brink of having his entire world collapse while trying to do the right thing. Al Pacino may be better known for other roles but he was never finer than he was here as firebrand CBS producer Lowell Bergman, carrying his loyalty and integrity right to the very edge with his company and on-air personality Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer). The only part of the script I didn't agree with was when Crowe's character is described by Bergman as being an ordinary person under extraordinary pressure for telling the truth. No matter how you slice it, Wigand was no ordinary person to put up with a divorce, the breakup of his family, and personal character assassination in order to out the tobacco companies. It takes a certain kind of individual in the face of overwhelming opposition to become, in a paraphrase of an earlier comment, a truth delivery system.

It's rare to find a movie of this stature. Brilliant performances by Pacino and Crowe, especially the former. The pace is intense, the direction brilliant! Not a flaw in this one. Go watch it! Your every minute will be well spent.

Smoking is bad for you. Duh. But when you know just a little bit of science you see right through this "whistle-blower's" claims. Tobacco companies added a chemical extracted from plants to give their product a more pleasant smell. They added green-leaf-volatiles; the chemical that gives fresh cut grass its pleasant smell. Jeffrey Wigand called it "rat poison." Warfarin is a rat poison in huge quantities and can be made from green leaf volatiles, it is also a life-saving drug that prevents strokes and heart-attacks. So the "whistle-blower" lied to make himself appear to be a hero. Tobacco companies called him a liar and were telling the truth, but since they are tobacco companies we have to believe every lie told about them. This movie fictionalized his exaggerations into a full-blown melodramatic hero-flick.

The ultimate anti-smoking ad. I've never smoked cigarettes, never have never will, but this movie still had an effect on me. It taught me that some whistle blowers are necessary. Not all whistle blowers, but ones that can potentially save future generations from an early death. Could you imagine if this story had not been told? If the Vanity Fair article had not been published? Where would we be not only as people, but consumers as well? It is due to the persistence of Wigand and Bergman, that this generation could be the generation to end smoking. Now granted, that's a big "could", but I'll move away from the political side of the film and focus more on the pros and cons.There is a lot to love about this movie. First, it managed to hold my interest for over 2 and a half hours. Not that I have a problem with long films, but it still says a lot for a movie that's basically all talk and no action to still hold my interest. The characters are portrayed very well, maybe not from a realistic standpoint, but they're very well acted. And I mean, it's Crowe and Pacino in the 90s, they were both on top of their games. The movie does take about 15 or so minutes to get moving, but once it did, it didn't let me go. I could get into the more technical aspects like the cinematography and what not, but I very rarely delve into that stuff. Bottom line, I can tell what's going on in scenes, I know who the characters are, and I find the story intriguing. The only real negative I can find about the film is that I had trouble telling where the characters were a lot of the time. One scene they're in their bedroom, the next they're on a beach somewhere, with no on-screen indication of where exactly they are. Now I've said this before and I'll say it again, "I don't need everything to be written for me in crayon.", but I think some time-stamps of where the characters are in a lot of their scenes would have been greatly appreciated.That small complaint (which I guess is more of a nitpick) aside though, this movie is great. It's characters are connectable, it manages to not seem overly dramatized, and the story it helped tell is still impacting us today. I don't think I'll ever see it again, but I'm very glad I saw it once.