Insider Essay, Research Paper

A dramatization of 1995 events in which the tobacco industry allegedly covered

up proof that nicotine is addictive and harmful. When Brown and Williamson

executive Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) tries to expose the industry’s cover-up, he is

threatened into silence. He eventually gets his story to 60 Minutes producer

Lowell Bergman (AL Pacino), but CBS decides against airing it due to political

and economic pressures, and the threat of lawsuit from Brown and Williamson.

Before we start, I think it’s important that you know a little thing about me,

and where I’m coming from. I do smoke. But I believe that most of the lawsuits

filed against the tobacco industry are unfounded, desperate attempts for people

to put the blame on anyone but themselves. I think social security is a safety

net for the financially irresponsible. I thought The Insider was a great movie

from a strictly entertainment perspective (don’t get ahead of me on this one!),

and I enjoyed it very much. Russell Crowe is Jeffrey Wigand, a Brown and

Williamson VP of Research and Development whose conscience compels him to blow

the whistle on the industry. He claims that Big Tobacco has been covering up

scientific research that proves nicotine is addictive and harmful. The writing

puts a lot of energy into making sure that Wigand is a sufficiently complicated

character, and one that we sympathize with. To be sure, he’s not entirely

one-dimensional. Initially, he does what most of us would do in his position: he

takes the money and benefits that the company offers him in return for silence.

After all, the guy has a family to look out for. But then Wigand is tortured

over his passiveness, wondering if he should take a more aggressive stance with

his potentially damaging knowledge. 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman, sensing

a big story in the works, tries to coax Wigand into talking. An energetic Al

Pacino, who fights to get the story on the air, only to have it snuffed by CBS,

plays Bergman here. Allegedly, the television network was possibly up for sale

around the time of this story, and airing it might have damaged their image with

controversy, making it less appealing to potential suitors. This, coupled with

the threat of lawsuit from Brown and Williamson, made CBS refuse to air the

story. The Insider portrays these events as a crusade on the part of Bergman and

Wigand to get the truth out there, against the will of Big Business and Bigger

Tobacco. And while Bergman is never portrayed as much more than a journalist

with an uncharacteristic amount of integrity, Wigand is a great character to

follow as he tries to balance out everything around him. Tortured and sleepless,

his reactions are what you would expect from someone forced to choose between

the safety of his family with the gravity of what he knows. Most of it makes for

edge of your suit viewing. Suspense abounds, and AL Pacino’s confrontations with

the "evil" corporate executives, censors, and whatnot are the

centerpiece of the movie. He gets to climb up on the soapbox and belt out a few

speeches about truth and justice and freedom and right and wrong and all that

other fun stuff. It’s tense, and it’s really quite fascinating, actually. From a

dramatic standpoint, this movie couldn’t have asked for better performances.

Gina Gershon makes an appearance in the movie as a tough, icy corporate attorney

for CBS. As a standard caricature of faceless law more interested in money than

people, she’s fabulous. The Insider runs at over two and half hours, but always

remains interesting and never drags. The biggest issue I have with this movie is

how it so comfortably passes itself off as an unbiased, historical

representation of what happened between real life executive Jeffrey Wigand, real

life producer Lowell Bergman, and real life corporation Brown and Williamson.

The problem is that the movie is so well crafted and so interesting that it’s

very easy to accept it as 100% Grade A Truth. However, this is clearly Wigand’s

story, and closer inspection would reveal that the main characters here are just

a little too perfect to be real. Did Bergman really storm into the offices of

CBS and rant and rave the way AL Pacino does in this movie? Some words might

have been exchanged, but it’s hard to believe anything as dramatic as what’s

depicted in The Insider could have happened for real. They would have likely

said, "Okay, calm down, have a cup of coffee, have a cigarette. And why do

you keep yelling HOO-WAH?" It would be nice to believe that such White

Knights exist, those who unconditionally put What’s Right ahead of themselves.

But let’s be realistic: these were real men, not angels, or prophets, and to

idolize them and glorify them as heroes armed with the written word is just too

much to swallow. Unfortunately, It’s fine to be opposed to Big Tobacco and

despise them for addicting millions to their products; but please, base your

hatred on facts and not fiction. Anti-tobacco camps use their fair share of

propaganda, but all of that seems conveniently ignored in this movie. If you

don’t believe crusaders of health can bend words just as deceptively as Big

Tobacco, consider this commercialized statement: second hand smoke is worse than

the smoke that the smoker inhales. Sounds good, doesn’t it? After all, the

smoker has a filter on the end of that cancer stick, and you’ve just got a cloud

of smoke. But common sense and just a brief moment of self-inspired thought

should tell you one thing: the smoker is inhaling the smoke through the filter

in addition to the "second hand" smoke floating around the both of

you. So how is he better off? My own personal beliefs (jump back to the

beginning of this summary if you need a refresher) not with standing, The

Insider is just too nauseatingly one-sided to be real. It’s interesting, yes,

but issues this complicated are never divided so black and white in real life.