Conclusions

Our conclusion of the movie "The Insider" is that the events shown in the film were fairly close to what happened in real life. The story focuses mainly on Jeffrey Wigand and Lowell Bergman, and the path they took in uncovering the falsehoods presented by Big Tobacco companies. There were a few differences that we found when watching the film. One of them was when Wigand was followed by a mysterious man towards the beginning of the movie. Another was that Mike Wallace was portrayed as agreeing with CBS's decision to edit the interview, while in reality, he did not support it. There were also changes in the timeline, most likely due to time restraints for the film.

However, despite all of these things, we all agreed that this was a really well made movie. Most of us had no previous knowledge about the topic beforehand, and now after becoming walking enclyopedias on the topic, we feel that this is an issue that more people should know about due to the fact that it's a more recent event and had an effect on the tobacco world and therefore on almost all the public health. Despite this, the movie didn't do too well when it hit theaters and actually lost money. Yikes! Nonetheless, "The Insider" had underlying messages about integrity, bravery and honesty that even when not applied to journalism, are important traits for society to have.

Lastly, the film and the message of the story were not overcome by "Hollywood sparkle."  Despite big names like Al Pacino, and a big producer like Michael Mann, the film held true to it's cause and doesn't have any unnecessary sex scenes or violence that you typically see in the movies. Though the actual topic of the movie may seem dry and boring, it was the actors and production that made a movie just under three hours long, very riveting.