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Thank You For Smoking
October 4, 2006
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, and neither did<br />
sci-fi adventure lead (<i>The Core</i>) or brooding cop lead (<i>Suspect Zero</i>).<br />
Thankfully, almost a decade since first bursting onto the screen, <b>Eckhart’s<br />
snake-oil charm and charisma are put to glorious use in writer-director Jason<br />
Reitman’s <i>Thank You For Smoking</i></b>.</p>
<p>A scabrous adaptation of Christopher Buckley’s satirical novel of the same<br />
name, <i>Thank You For Smoking</i> is <b>a movie that keeps you consistently<br />
laughing, and yet by its conclusion crystallizes into a persuasive argument for<br />
personal accountability over escalating governmental attempts to legislate<br />
common sense and individual responsibility</b>. Eckhart stars as the smooth-talking<br />
Nick Naylor, a silver-tongued lobbyist who could sell Tupperware full of<br />
Turkish delight to the Kurds. Naylor works for the Academy of Tobacco Studies <st1:place><st1></st1></st1:place> — a mouthpiece<br />
of conglomerated Big Tobacco — and gets paid to defend cynical manufacturers<br />
against the zealotry of those who would legislate cigarettes out of existence.</p>
<p>He’s a hired gun — a damn good one, too — and has no qualms about what he<br />
does. To the chagrin of his ex-wife, Nick even instructs his young son Joey<br />
(Cameron Bright) in moral flexibility, how in arguments he doesn’t himself have<br />
to be right, but only disprove the opposing position. When questioned about<br />
this for a profile piece by an ambitious <st1:state><st1:place>Washington</st1:place></st1:state><br />
reporter, Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes), <b>Nick deploys the yuppie Nuremburg<br />
defense: “Ninety-nine percent of all good and bad is done to pay the mortgage.”</b><br />
It’s no small wonder, then, that Nick’s only friends are his fellow “merchants<br />
of death” lobbyists, firearms spinner Bobby Jay Bliss (David Koechner) and<br />
pro-alcohol supplicant Polly Bailey (Maria Bello). </p>
<p>When confronted by the opportunistic Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H.<br />
Macy), who wants to put poison stickers on all cigarette packs, Nick goes on a<br />
PR offensive, hitting the talk shows with a vengeance and enlisting a New Age-y<br />
<st1:place>Hollywood</st1:place> super-agent, Jeff Megall (Rob Lowe), to<br />
arrange a blatant product placement deal in a big-budget science-fiction film.<br />
At the behest of his bosses, he even treks out to the desert to visit Lorne Lutch<br />
(Sam Elliott), the original Marlboro Man, who is now dying of cancer and<br />
presents a compelling potential subpoena subject for Finistirre’s impending<br />
Congressional hearings. Eventually, though — and ironically, too, for a man<br />
whose reputation is built on the spry interchangeability and essential<br />
meaninglessness of language — Nick’s own words come back to bite him, and he<br />
becomes a liability to his employers. A death threat and the increased scrutiny<br />
of Joey may force, if not the full-fledged sprouting of a conscience, then at<br />
least a serious reexamination of career path. </p>
<p>Feature neophyte Reitman, the son of comedy legend Ivan Reitman, has an<br />
estimable list of shorts and advertising credits to his name, but <b><i>Thank You<br />
For Smoking</i> sings with a plucky confidence</b> beyond his years. From its<br />
folk-ditty intro and the whimsical music of Rolfe Kent (<i>Sideways</i>) to its<br />
acerbic banter and pitch-perfect supporting characters (Adam Brody’s chatterbox<br />
agency assistant is a highlight), <b>Reitman succeeds in transferring the novel’s<br />
libertarian point of view wholesale to the movie, while also shrewdly assaying<br />
the larger culture of spin that informs its roots</b>. Only a few loose scenes that<br />
let slip limited production means seem out of step with the bigger picture. </p>
<p>To say that <i>Thank You For Smoking</i>‘s Nick Naylor — a proxy for<br />
preening, capitalistic modernity — represents the role Eckhart was born to play<br />
hopefully doesn’t consign him to a career of future disappointments, but rather<br />
highlight his unique ability to be both slightly seedy and still charming as<br />
all get out — to convey avarice as an enchanting trait. The rest of the film is<br />
likewise cast smartly, with Elliott perfectly embodying his embittered cowboy<br />
role and Robert Duvall serving as the mint julep-sipping “Captain” of Big<br />
Tobacco in a small part. <b>The only weak link is Holmes, who still cannot<br />
convincingly portray an adult character of any measurable substance</b>, let alone<br />
the scheming reporter required of her here. That said, <i>Thank You For Smoking</i> is still as <b>giftedly dry and roundly<br />
hilarious</b> a satire as has been seen in American cinema in the past five years.</p>
<p>DVD extras include two audio commentary tracks, one with Reitman flying solo and another with he, Eckhart and bit player Koechner. Thirteen deleted scenes with optional commentary from Reitman run about 15 minutes in total, and the director and star’s appearance on <i>The Charlie Rose Show</i> is also included. Rounding out the disc are storyboards, an art department gallery, a five-minute featurette examining America’s culture of spin and a separate production featurette clocking in at nine minutes. It’s great to see such robust attention to detail on a smaller picture like this. <b>B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)</b></p>
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