* * * * The Minus Man (Artisan, 102 minutes, R, priced for rental, DVD available): This movie takes a good long look at a lost, lost soul. He’ll holler at his CBS bosses, but he’s too much of a pragmatist to quit his job in protest when he still thinks he can help to get the story out. Pacino is a more dramatic, and cannier, sort of guy. So for director/co-writer Michael Mann, the challenge was to avoid overdramatizing the material.Ĭrowe gives a powerful, close-to-the-vest performance as an honorable man whose life is in crisis. There’s a lot more to this story, which has all the intrigue, suspense and drama of a good murder mystery – only in this case the victim is the American public. In the interview, Wigand explains that, within Brown & Williamson, cigarettes are considered “a delivery device for nicotine.” His remarks contradict the testimony of the company’s head honcho, who had sworn under oath that he did not believe cigarettes to be addictive.īut the movie’s real turning point comes after Wigand tapes the interview – when CBS starts to get cold feet about airing it. The third romance involves the town’s sheriff, a taciturn macho man played by the almost-deadpan William H. Schaefer (Illeana Douglas), the local schoolteacher, and Wayne, whose full name, incidentally, is Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr. The most conventional of these involves the smart, handsome Harry, who starts palling around with Josephine (Ally Walker), Happy’s pretty banker. Somewhere in there, there’s a love story. Jeremy Northam and Steve Zahn play Harry and Wayne, a pair of escaped convicts who pretend to be gay beauty-pageant producers to evade the long and not-especially-swift arm of the law. * * * * Happy, Texas (Buena Vista, 97 minutes, PG-13, priced for rental): This small, disarming film – which is set in the small, disarming town that lends its name to the title – is a sunny-spirited comedy whose ironies are of the lightest and gentlest sort.ĭirected by first-timer Mark Illsley, Happy, Texas is a fractured fable with an agreeably amateurish charm.

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