A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.
Acting
Crowe's nervous breakdown in the hotel room — unbearably real.
Direction
Mann turns phone calls and hotel rooms into pure kinetic terror.
Score
Lisa Gerrard's vocals haunt every frame like corporate doom itself.
Director
Michael Mann
Al Pacino
Lowell Bergman
Russell Crowe
Jeffrey Wigand
Christopher Plummer
Mike Wallace
Diane Venora
Liane Wigand
Philip Baker Hall
Don Hewitt
Lindsay Crouse
Sharon Tiller
Debi Mazar
Debbie De Luca
Stephen Tobolowsky
Eric Kluster
Colm Feore
Richard Scruggs
Bruce McGill
Ron Motley
Gina Gershon
Helen Caperelli
Michael Gambon
Thomas Sandefur
Rip Torn
John Scanlon
Lynne Thigpen
Mrs. Williams
Hallie Eisenberg
Barbara Wigand
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The real Jeffrey Wigand called Crowe's performance 'eerie' — he apparently mimicked his actual mannerisms so precisely that Wigand's own daughter thought she was watching her father.
This film essentially killed the 'noble tobacco executive' as a viable character type in Hollywood; after this, you couldn't dramatize Big Tobacco without acknowledging the body count.
US
