THE INSIDER

Directed by Michael Mann. Starring Al Pacino, Russell Crowe

A BRAVE and blisteringly powerful expose of the American tobacco industry's absolute moral bankruptcy, Michael Mann's stunningly accomplished fifth feature is perhaps the most truly important "issue" movie of the last few years, and if it doesn't bag at least a couple of Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be discredited beyond repair.

Stunningly focused and single-minded, The Insider was considered miles too close to the bone by American tobacco giant Brown ... Williamson, who were reportedly contemplating legal action at the time of writing - and after watching ten minutes of this engrossing drama, it's not hard to see why.

The events documented by the film are based entirely on fact, and Mann resists any temptation to cut corners or simplify the story for easy-option mass appeal - an approach which ultimately serves to increase its impact massively, with not one of the movie's 160 minutes wasted. The Insider's richly-detailed plot revolves around the exposure of malpractice in the American tobacco behemoth B...W, whose head of research and development Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe), is fired on the flimsiest of pretexts and slowly sets about biting the hand that used to feed him.

Veteran investigative journalist Lowell Bergman (Pacino) becomes aware of Wigand's existence, senses the possibility of hard-hitting public-interest revelations for the flagship CBS news programme 60 Minutes, and somehow manages to persuade a deeply-reluctant Wigand to spill some of the company's most closely-guarded secrets before a network-news camera. Our flawed hero, though aware of the company's awesome financial and legal muscle, has only a vague conception of the enormous repercussions he's leaving himself open to - his ex-employers invoke a confidentiality clause, threaten to withdraw his family's medical benefits, and gradually progress to infinitely more sinister forms of intimidation.

A magnificent Crowe, more subdued and complex than ever before, captures his character's increasingly frayed demeanour with pinpoint precision, while Pacino is in vintage form, dripping with integrity and intelligence. What unfolds is as gripping a conspiracy thriller as any ever to emerge from the Hollywood system, all the more unnerving because it rings so obviously true. Mann directs with all the striking visual stylishness he brought to bear on Heat and Last Of The Mohicans, while allowing the story to motor its way slowly but surely towards a richly rewarding finale.

The Insider isn't remotely an anti-smoking movie in the sense of being preachy or dogmatic - there's nothing revealed here about cigarettes per se that most of us hadn't suspected already - but as a stinging critique of corporate capitalism and its ruthless readiness to destroy the little guy in defence of extra dollars, the film has very few precedents in recent American history. Oscars are probably out of the question, given the committee's notorious distrust of anything even faintly controversial - but when the end-of-year honours are being dished out, The Insider should be present on all lists.

Tobacco seriously damages health: don't smoke if you want to stay healthy (if you don't believe me, listen to the government). The Insider is unlikely to single-handedly decimate the tobacco industry, but it demonstrates exactly whose coffers you're coughing your money into, and might even make you think twice about the next pack. And as pure entertainment, it succeeds beyond all imagination. See it now.