Inside an addiction

We are in the nicotine delivery business. The raison-de-etre of the Brown and Williamson tobacco company, and indeed of any tobacco manufacturer, becomes clear. And it takes a man beyond despair (Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand), to eke out a victory over his former employer, with no little help from Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) - alienated from family, work, the legal system and the general public - in The Insider. The irony of the WSJ, the bastion of capitalism, triggering off a chain of events that led to a $246 billion settlement with Big Tobacco, the largest public action litigation in history, is not lost upon the audience. The movie however stands out not as a morality tale by any means, but on account of Russell Crowe's superlative performance that foreshadows the grim reality of Jim Braddock in Cinderella Man and the shuffling erudition of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind. Watch this movie back to back with Thank You For Smoking and you may well kick the habit.