MOVIE REVIEW: Thank You For Smoking
Written by: Susan Granger

MODA MAG.COM --  Satire doesn’t come much sharper than this cynical comedy about a tobacco lobbyist who can talk anyone into anything. But tobacco isn’t the only target of Jason Reitman’s adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s 1994 novel. Wily politicians, Hollywood agents and ambitious journalists, even the ailing, elderly Marlboro Man get skewered.

     Oozing self-confidence, Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) represents the Academy of Tobacco Studies. Not surprisingly, his best friends are also spinmeisters, alcohol and firearms lobbyists (Maria Bello, David Koechner); they refer to themselves as the M.O.D. Squad (Merchants of Death). Despite the disapproval of his ex-wife (Kim Dickens), Nick exerts a strong influence on his impressionable young son (Cameron Bright).

     “If you argue correctly, you’re never wrong,” he says. Nothing fazes Nick. Not a crusading Senator (William H. Macy) who wants a skull-and-crossbones label on every cigarette pack, nor an unscrupulous reporter (Katie Holmes) who is willing to bed her quarry for a good story. This “sultan of spin” is a verbal gymnast, with “moral flexibility” as his weapon of choice.

     Writer/director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan) delivers intelligent political incorrectness with stylish slime, particularly a glossy sequence when Nick goes to Hollywood to confer with a top agent (Rob Lowe) to get cigarettes more glamorous product-placement in movies and when he bribes the cancer-stricken Marlboro Man (Sam Elliott) into silence.

     Best known as the cruel businessman in “In the Company of Strangers,” handsome Aaron Eckhart makes a phenomenal phony, while the supporting cast is impressive, including Robert Duvall, J.K. Simmons and Sam Elliott. And the vintage “smoking songs” of Tex Williams, the Kingston Trio and the Mills Brothers add to the fun. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Thank You for Smoking” is a wry, irreverent 8. It’s a merciless smoke screen.