Thank You For Smoking
Thank You For Smoking is a sly, merciless satire that pulls no punches—exactly what is required when your protagonist is the chief spokesman for the tobacco industry. Underrated Aaron Eckhart turns in another outstanding performance, actually coming off less reprehensible as a guy who pushes cigarettes on kids than the misogynist creeps he plays in Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, films which essentially launched his career. Here Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, the slick-talking mouthpiece of the the Big Tobacco lobby. Naylor is being pulled in two directions while trying to bullshit his way through his career but not his life. He works hard at his job, a job he initially has difficulty explaining to his pre-teen son. However, he soon finds there are real-life lessons in his work, and he can rationalize what he does for a living while teaching his son a valuable message about personal choice and responsibility.
The movie's funniest scenes revolve around regular meetings of the MOD squad (Merchants of Death)—which consists of Naylor and fellow spokespersons for the alcohol (Maria Bello) and firearms (David Koechner) industries—during which they compare who had the worst week in public relations. Naylor usually wins, thanks to a whiny liberal senator from Vermont (William H. Macy) who's trying to outlaw smoking and a debacle of his own doing when he's seduced by a young reporter (Katie Holmes) who uses his off-the-record remarks in an exposé.
Jason Reitman's directorial debut is a slick, crafty film that moves briskly and never loses its edge (his dad Ivan, who hasn't made a decent film since Dave, might want to ask his son for advice), while his screenplay, adapted from Christopher Buckley's novel, has no qualms about preserving Buckley's conservative message of personal responsibility, a refreshing experience in a Hollywood movie. The only question is, in this day and age of buck-passing and instant gratification, will anyone get it?