Thank You for Smoking

Ivan Reitman must be so proud. I'm not kidding, his son Jason has come out with a caustic original comedy all his own. I don't know what people outside Los Angeles may make of this. They may think is science fiction when, in fact, most people who have spent any time there knows that this is as normal as going to church in the Vatican. The scenes inside the CAA like agency are even underplayed if you believe that. Aaron Eckhart is as perfect as they come. The charming monster with human sides. William H Macy, Rob Lowe and the rest of the cast are great fun to watch. I'm rooting for this movie to make a zillion bucks. It'll be nice to have more good writing, good acting and good direction in March for a change.

The chief spokesperson and lobbyist Nick Taylor (Aaron Eckhart) is the Vice-President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies. He is talented in speaking and spins argument to defend the cigarette industry in the most difficult situations. His best friends are Polly Bailey (Maria Bello) that works in the Moderation Council in alcohol business, and Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner) of the gun business own advisory group SAFETY. They frequently meet each other in a bar and they self-entitle the Mod Squad a.k.a. Merchants of Death, disputing which industry has killed more people. Nick's greatest enemy is Vermont's Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H. Macy), who defends in the Senate the use a skull and crossed bones in the cigarette packs. Nick's son Joey Naylor (Cameron Bright) lives with his mother, and has the chance to know his father in a business trip. When the ambitious reporter Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes) betrays Nick disclosing confidences he had in bed with her, his life turns upside-down. But Nick is good in what he does for the mortgage.

"Thank you for Smoking" is a great politically incorrect movie, that satirizes the phobia against smokers and cigarette industry. Aaron Eckhart is simply awesome in the role of a man that has argument and is good in talking. The witty screenplay is original, using cynical lines and amoral characters. I quited smoking almost twenty-five years ago, and I do not like smokers and cigarettes, but Nick Taylor is amazing spinning the truth to defend the cigarette industry to pay his mortgage. Like said in "An Inconvenient Truth": "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it". My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Obrigado Por Fumar" ("Thank you for Smoking")

Nick Naylor is a talented man who is employed as one of the top spokesmen for "Big Tobacco". Sure he has to keep the alleged "truth" about the health effects, contributing to the death of 1200 people each and every day, but he's got to pay the mortgage just like the rest of us. He is separated from his wife but still wants to be a role model to his son while also pursuing his chosen career. Summoned to meet with The General (one of the last great tobacco barons), Nick is put in charge of pushing through new ways of promoting smoking while also defeating a push by Senator Finistirre to put a skull and crossbones on the front of every cigarette packet sold in the country.

If the plot summary sounds like this film has a definite narrative flow to it then I'm sorry for misleading you because, although it moves in a certain direction, it isn't that tight a story. It probably didn't help either that I had literally been in a different cinema watching Dr Strangelove an hour before I watched this film because this was never going to be able to compare (no matter what the current IMDb rating says!). The comedy isn't that sharp and in terms of satire this is about as mean as a poodle. This lack of teeth is evident from the very start where the opening credits are kind of cool, comic and fun; in the same way the comedy is cool, funny, enjoyable but not really something that rips into its subject with an acerbic wit that I expected. Part of me was thinking this at times that this was a problem but then I realised that it actually wasn't that big a deal.

The reason is that, sure it ain't a sharp satire, but it is a fun comedy with a general swagger and a great ear for dialogue. The story wanders and tends to go off in directions that it drops or doesn't follow through, but by staying with Nick at least we have a focal point that is interesting and engaging. I did have a bit of a problem swallowing Nick's sudden massive lack of professional judgement and the fact that it is a key part of the plot made the film seem to stall for a while, but such moments were mostly covered by the pace and energy of the majority. The targets are easy but the manner of writing produces a great feel of mocking them from the inside rather than being outside throwing stones. The "gentle mocking" approach takes away the edge but it makes the film easier to enjoy. It has a steadily amusing air to it while also throwing in lines, characters and touches that made me laugh out loud. Reitman may not be the future of satire but he can certainly do comedy and this film is all the better for this work as director and screen writer.

The cast is deep and everyone gets a piece (albeit mostly small pieces). The film belongs to Eckhart who has proved (Company of Men etc) that he seems to find it easy to play characters whose moral compasses are way off. He is as charming as he is soulless and he is a delight to watch – a major force in the film being as engaging as it was. The support cast includes some real heavyweight names such as Duvall, Bello, Elliott, Holmes, Macy, Simmons, Lowe and others. Generally the quality is high but I found the presence of Holmes to be a distraction and her "fully clothed" sex scenes to be pretty laughable – her lack of genuine sex appeal and chemistry here made her part of the plot much harder to buy.

Overall then this is not the sharp, acerbic satire that some reviewers would have you believe it is – it simply hasn't got the teeth or the balls for that. But this shouldn't matter too much because what it does do is produce a consistently fun atmosphere that is cynical without wandering away from being pretty mainstream in delivery. The cast are mostly very good but Eckhart dominates with a great lead role while the material keeps the laughs coming on a fairly regular basis.

A clever satire of the spin-world (thanks largely to its cast and a witty script by Jason Reitman), Thank You For Smoking comes on like Wag the Dog via The Insider – it's a painfully honest insight into the tobacco industry, led by the narration of Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), the Big Tobacco corporation's chief spokesman. His narcissistic self-infatuation ("Charles Manson kills people; I talk.") and sleazy tactics land him in trouble when he finds himself bribing a lung cancer victim in front of his pre-teen son, who is not yet old enough to smoke but is being influenced by his money-driven father.

Nick has a lot on his mind. He's got pressure from an anti-smoking Senator (played brilliantly by William H. Macy), his boss, his ex-wife, fanatical groups on homicidal missions, a double-crossing reporter (Katie Holmes) and a Hollywood producer (Rob Lowe) trying to cast the perfect Hollywood glamorization of smoking (Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones are offered as the leads).

The movie, directed by the son of Ivan Reitman (the "Ghosbusters" director/producer extraordinaire), balances absurdity with realism; moments of the film come across as poignant reflection while following scenes are completely the opposite. This balance is thrown off a bit sometimes – David Koechner's portrayal of an NRA lobbyist is great but feels out of place, as if it belongs in a comedy in the vein of "Anchorman." And ultimately this uneven mix of the deadly serious (literally) with off-the-wall gags does catch up with the film; it eventually falls back upon its very strong script, which supports it (a lesser film might be affected more drastically with a weaker screenplay), but some scenes probably should have been toned down a bit to comply with the subtler and more realistic scenes. For what it's worth, the wacky scenes are extremely hilarious, but they seem to contradict other portions of the material.

Jason is a better director than his father, though, and shows a lot of potential here: I'd say the direction is almost deserving of a more serious film. I'd love to see what he could do with a drama in the future.

The movie also boasts an excellent lead performance by Aaron Eckhart, who oozes with sleaze, greed, corruption and a hidden sense of morals. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but he's not a stereotypical Hollywood motion picture "good guy" – even the closing of the picture, without spoiling it, isn't the moralistic cop-out I had expected; the movie isn't a black-and-white painting of the smoking controversy; it doesn't take sides on either side of the debate.

This is really being marketed incorrectly as the next "40-Year-Old Virgin" right now, but the film – for the most part, anyway – really isn't as hilarious as it is thought-provoking and engaging. Apart from a few aforementioned moments of utter absurdity, the majority of the film's duration involves some pretty serious topics, and it handles them well. It's not a bust-your-gut-funny movie, and it's perhaps not as strong as some reviews would lead you to believe, but it's one of the better satires in recent memory and certainly one of the more effective since Wag the Dog.

EDITED to omit reported 'spoilers'. And by spoilers I don't mean the "Bruce Willis is dead" type, but "Bruce Willis is bald" types. *sigh*

Some jobs are harder than others but Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), tobacco industry spokesman, handles his with effortless skill. Along with two other spokespeople for the alcohol- and firearms industry respectively, he is part of the self-appointed M.O.D. squad ("Merchants of Death") whose main objective is to talk. To BS. To spin. To confuse and convince their opponent, and charm their audience. A job of such nature naturally requires a certain moral flexibility, and with smooth-talk and sex appeal, it is apparent that Nick is incredibly gifted in this area.

He goes on TV-shows, verbally battles U.S. senators, deems the Cancer Research Foundation "arseholes" – all the while trying to set an example for his 10-year-old son. This is naturally very difficult, doing what he does. So as Big Tobacco (for whom he is a lobbyist) launches a campaign to reinstate the "cool smoking" image into mainstream Hollywood, and sends Nick to work a producer for the proper product-placement, Nick decides to bring his son along for the ride, to see "how daddy works" in hopes to bond with him.

Good satires are hard to come by, but Reitman's "Thank You For Smoking" is so wet with sarcasm and dripping with humour that it is impossible not to enjoy. It navigates the fast-paced industry, the art of talking and spoofs the anti-smoking camp with their chiché "cancer-sick boy in a wheelchair" front (as seen in the opening scene of the film), and it explores the moral flexibility of Americans, without preaching too much in doing so. Only once does it fall prey to predictable moral messages, as when Nick starts reevaluating his work and has moral qualms following his kidnapping by an anti-smoking group, only to swoop down into tongue-and-cheek mode again and return twice as biting – and twice as funny.

Although the film is evenly peppered with fun one-liners and perfect delivery from its cast, the best scene is when the M.O.D. squad are at their usual restaurant hang-out at the end of the day and brag to each other and argue over whose business kills the most people per year. Nick: "How many alcohol-related deaths per day? 100,000? That's what... 270 a day? Wow. 270 people, tragedy. Excuse me if I don't exactly see terrorists getting excited about kidnapping anyone from the alcohol-industry." Maria Bello who plays the detached, funny Moderate Spokeswoman for alcohol has great in-your-face aptitude and attitude, "That's stupid arguing." Aaron Eckhart is also hilarious throughout in a shady businessman way (I now have a major crush on him). Out of all the cast, only Nick's little kid Joe chokes on the well-written lines.

In fact, even the cinematography is well-crafted in the film... just the way a scene cuts to another deserves credit, opening with a rapid-fire ironic note. Speaking of which, "Thank You"'s opening montage of cigarette packages as credits is a stroke of genius on Reitman's part. So are the various casting choices – the amount of respected actors that have been crammed into supporting roles in impressive (Robert Duvall, Sam Elliot, William H. Macy) and give rise to an almost familiar and "feel-good" tone in the film.

That said, I wouldn't call this "laugh-out-loud worthy" exactly and I didn't care for the ending but it is clear that a lot of thought has been put into Thank You For Smoking – every line is a well-articulated kick up the arse to something and delivered by the bucket-load. A very enjoyable little satire.

8 out of 10