Plot summary

This movie tells the true story of Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), a former tobacco executive, who decided to appear on 60 Minutes (1968). As a matter of conscience partially prodded by Producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), he revealed that, the tobacco industry was not only aware that cigarettes are addictive and harmful, but deliberately worked on increasing that addictiveness. Unfortunately, both protagonists of this story learn the hard way that simply telling the truth is not enough as they struggle against Big Tobacco's attempts to silence them and CBS's own cowardly complicit preference of putting money as a higher priority over the truth.—Kenneth Chisholm