Ever since the Redford-Hoffman hagiography of Woodward and Bernstein in "All the President's Men" a quarter of a century ago, Hollywood's journalists have been looking more like cops and mobsters than truth-seeking saints. Sometimes they've been depicted as downright corrupt, like Sally Field's character affairing around with a source in "Absence of Malice." Sometimes they've been slavering hucksters, like Dustin Hoffman's slimy anchorman in "Mad City." Most commonly, they're a pushy pack of werewolf creeps, as in "A Cry in the Dark." Rare are the occasional good guys played by Albert Brooks and Holly Hunter in "Broadcast News," but even those paragons didn't seize the initiative. In the end, they were noble losers, left behind in the age of the pretty boys (like William Hurt), their golden intentions smashed to pieces by corporate clowns who run their shows into the ground.

Hollywood, in its fashion, knows whose images it's safe to dump on. Journalists are easy pickings. When Americans were polled last year and asked how they rated the state of ethics in various professions, a less-than-stirring 18 percent ranked the ethics of journalists "extremely high" or "high"; in some diabolical coincidence, journalists tied with lawyers and corporate executives in the lower reaches of ill repute. The yearlong orgy of sex inquisition, in the wake of revelations about Bill Clinton's peccadilloes surely did not help the profession improve its public standing.

Christopher Plummer as "60 Minutes" newsman Mike Wallace

The general morass into which journalism has sunk makes "The Insider"---a strong thriller in its own right--- especially inspiring. Al Pacino's vivid impersonation of former "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman gives us not only a hero but a go-getting one, a man of action in a movie that features not a single car crash or eye gouging. Yet, for all his pains, this hero is not granted a Hollywood ending. Famously, it was Bergman, a onetime underground newspaper editor and all-around radical muckraker, who took the initiative to bring Dr. Jeffrey Wigand, the former chief scientist at Brown & Williamson Tobacco, before the "60 Minutes" cameras at a time when big tobacco was still riding high. Bergman refused to hear the word "no" from a desperately frightened Wigand. He camped on his doorstep and strategized with him. He hired security for him when he feared for his life and his children's. And when CBS put the lid on Wigand's interview with Mike Wallace, because CEO Larry Tisch didn't want to botch his deal for a lucrative sale to Westinghouse, Bergman refused to let the organization live his morals for him. When he talked to Vanity Fair's Marie Brenner, he became a whistle-blower, too. As news organizations devolve into entertainment delivery devices, the good guy has to buck his own bosses as well as the Brown and Williamson tobacco company to get a tremendous life-and-death story on the air.

One movie, two live heroes based on reality: it's a miracle. Russell Crowe's rendition of Wigand is rounded, under the top, not squeaky-clean: a hero who sweats, panics, and does not live happily ever after. Pacino's hard-charging Bergman is a more romantic figure, but there's a kind of payback in this rather airbrushed rendition of a newsmagazine producer who walks tall when he's betrayed by corporate and news bigwigs lest his story get in the way of a business deal. Most of the audience doubtless did not know beforehand that in television the producer is the actual reporter, while the on-screen face, the "talent," the Mike Wallace or Ed Bradley, gets the glory and most of the money. The real-life Mike Wallace, who has publicly expressed distaste for Christopher Plummer's rendering of him as less than stalwart, may well be miffed because the movie realistically shows that the producer does most of the work while the weathered face and inquisitive eyebrows pull in the acclaim.

Still, "The Insider" is suitably complex, and for all its clear taking of sides (the script has nothing to say for Brown & Williamson CEO Arthur Sandifur, played with sinister charm by Michael Gambon), this movie is too juicy and dark to be written off as agitprop.

Russell Crowe as the former Brown & Williamson scientist-turned-inside source Dr. Jeffrey Wigand

Brown & Williamson, not incidentally, has apparently been impressed by the excellent suspense, crisp direction, smart script (by director Michael Mann and Eric Roth), meticulous acting, nicely controlled performances by Pacino, Crowe, and the rest of the cast. Under the cover of a corporate pseudonym, the company has hired teenagers (paid with cartons of cigarettes?) to pass out cards in New York, Los Angeles, and several other cities where the movie is playing, inviting patrons to call an 800 number to participate in an audience survey. The patron there is asked a series of leading questions about "The Insider"---questions that would not pass a fairness test in Statistics 1, designed as they are to elicit a response that would be usable in a court of law should Brown & Williamson decide to sue the filmmakers for defamation. In this case, the filmmakers are backed by the Disney corporation, and one would dearly like to see Brown & William whine victimization, lose, and bust its tar-stained bank in an effort to defend its warmth and fuzziness in court.

- Todd Gitlin is professor of culture, journalism, and sociology at New York University, and the author, most recently, of a novel, "Sacrifice" (Henry Holt & Company).

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