Much of the first half of Charles Evans Jr.'s muckraking documentary is annoyingly gimmicky, relying on unneeded graphics, animation, and imitation-Errol-Morris effects to tell the tale of a Philip Morris scientist, Victor DeNoble, who became a key government witness against his old employer. The second half changes tone completely and, as a sober-minded news documentary, finds itself in the engrossing Congressional battle of the 1990s to get smug tobacco industry executives to admit the obvious: that they are selling to the public what they know to be an addictive drug.
