F. Ross Johnson

But without further ado, let's hop into it.

The movie begins with an introduction to our main character, Ross Johnson, who from a very young age, a bit of a go-getter, a smooth salesman, who by 1988 has become the CEO of RJR Nabisco, with him attending a corporate event for the company with his wife.

And it's in this scene that we get introduced to a bunch of the main characters of the movie.

There's Charlie Hugo, the chairman of the board of directors, effectively Ross's boss in a way.

Something that's a bit of a theme throughout the whole movie and pretty important to the plot.

Because Ross, for his part... really enjoys being flippant with company money, giving Rolexes away to clients, throwing big parties, and even enjoying a fleet of his own private jets.

All of which is pretty accurate to the real Ross Johnson, who was known for greatly increasing his own executive pay while working at companies and enjoying many company perks, with him sort of developing this image as the epitome of corporate greed.

But at the event, Ross appears to be well-liked, again, very personable with everyone there, And we see people celebrating this news story played on the TV around an individual, Anthony Cipollone, being awarded $400,000 in damages by cigarette companies.

It was crazy.

I remember going up to where Ross Johnson, he was the CEO of RJR at the time, like where his office was.

I mean, it was so much corporate opulence was in that place, to put it mildly.

And the stuff that they would bring out, like when I got there, it was just food.