Tuesday, July 31, 2007

NOT MANY HEROES AROUND

Every once in a while a movie shows up that sticks with you even when in a sense, you already know the outcome: the demise of bigtime tobacco. (I find it pretty hard to put the bad mouth on tobacco since I was raised on a tobacco farm). The flip side of the coin is that I've never smoked. So...this movie is not so much about tobacco as it is about a crisis of conscience which envelops one man: Jeffrey Wigand.

I remember following all of it on Sixty Minutes. Like so many things in life, few of us who care knew all the machinations going on inside Sixty Minutes concerning a program of how tobacco executives lied and how Wigard had evidence of the lying, especially his company, Brown and Williamson.

What we discovered is that big tobacco also had big money. And, money rules especially where truth is involved.

This movie, The Insider, was totally ignored at the box office but this is not so unusual. What makes this really different is that the movie making people loved it: seven nominations for Oscars. I don't particularly like Russell Crow, my problem: his private life often overshadows his acting ability. Not his fault but mine. Anyway, the movie highlights the producer of Sixty Minutes, Lowell Bergman, who is a hero: in fact, Al Pacino, plays a great part. Often he sounds just like Lieutenant Frank Slade in Scent of a woman. The real life Wigard has to be a hero too: lost his family, profession. Christopher Plummer who played Mike Wallace had his moments. Good movie and in light of so many anti heroes in today's world, kind of nice to see one stand up. 2 parachutes

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