Nobody, in the movies, can yell like Al Pacino. No one can quite talk softly as well as he can either -- and it's a good thing for The Insider, a terrific, tense, conversation-driven thriller about 60 Minutes' 1995 journalistic belly flop on Big Tobacco.

Pacino plays Lowell Bergman, the producer who does all the actual work behind the big stories that make Mike Wallace look so good. Australian Russell Crowe (who was so good in L.A. Confidential) puts on another rock solid American accent -- not to mention about 50 pounds -- to play Dr. Jeffrey Wigand a flawed, fired former Tobacco executive who is coaxed by Bergman into playing whistle blower. But Wigand's decision to go public only sparks the drama -- as he and his family are hit with death threats, and CBS is threatened with catastrophic lawsuits.

Christopher Plummer takes on the key role of Wallace, and while he doesn't come close to a perfect impression -- he captures the essence of respected journalist perfectly. In fact, all the performances in the film totally sing. The script is wonderful, too -- dramatic, yet entirely realistic and believable. When actors as good as this click with a script as good as this -- look out.

A large part of the credit also must go to director Michael Mann. Working, as always, with cinematographer Dante Spinotti, Mann gives the film a wonderfully dark look without making it seem at all otherworldly. Mann also makes the world of journalism look exciting -- with covert meetings in hotel lobbies and on dark street corners. The film opens with Pacino, blindfolded, in the back of a car, being taken to a secret rendezvous with a terrorist leader that Wallace hopes to interview. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were watching a Harrison Ford espionage thriller.

The villains in this movie, though, aren't terrorists -- they're big Tobacco and Corporate America. It's heroes are two men, Wigand and Bergman, who stood up for their principles. It's also about these two men, who sold out but later redeemed themselves by using their knowledge and talents to do something good.

(c) Copyright 1999