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Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is Vice President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a puffed-up title for an organisation that funnels tobacco money into bogus studies de-emphasising the health risks of smoking. Naylor is smooth, personable, bright – the “Colonel Sanders of nicotine” to his friends, a “yuppie Mephistopheles” to his enemies. He’s an ideal candidate for the public face of an impossible cause. As the sole pro-tobacco panelist on the Joan Lunden talk show, he even manages to charm a 15-year old with cancer. (He tells his son that being a lobbyist requires “moral flexibility”.)

There’s not much of a plot; Thank You for Smoking is more a string of events. We see Naylor hang out with his fellow “Merchants of Death” (the MOD squad, get it?): spokespeople for the equally besieged-but-profitable alcohol and firearm industries (Maria Bello and David Koechner). In an attempt to boost cigarette sales and get tobacco off the defensive, Naylor approaches a Hollywood super-agent (Rob Lowe) about getting more glamorous stars to light up on screen. His idea elicits praise from the self-styled Captain of the tobacco industry (Robert Duvall), who flies Naylor by private jet to visit him in North Carolina. Meanwhile, a puritanical Senator from Vermont (William H. Macy) is campaigning to have a skull and crossbones added to cigarette packets and Naylor is fielding death threats during a live-to-air TV spot.

First-time writer-director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman) is adapting a 1994 novel by Christopher Buckley. He makes some improvements – notably cutting down some labyrinthine sub-plotting revolving around Naylor’s kidnapping by anti-smoking extremists. But he doesn’t fill in the gaps, leaving us wondering about the ultimate identity and fate of his kidnappers.

The book’s comedy is sharper and blacker. Reitman has diluted it by expanding the role of Naylor’s teenage son, Joey (Cameron Bright from Birth and X-Men 3). Bright’s an accomplished, spookily adult performer, but his symbolic presence as his dad’s conscience can’t help but weigh down the movie. Does Reitman think Naylor will fool us into believing his shtick if we don’t see his son following him around like a shadow? It also sets the movie up for a sentimental finish, in a story where even a little sentiment sticks out as too much. (It blackens the promise of Jason Reitman’s future career if this is some kind of tribute to his father, who dragged him around Hollywood movie sets as a youngster.)

Otherwise, Reitman sells the material with a light, poppy touch. Thank You for Smoking is slick and snappily paced, rather like a personal encounter with Naylor. He elicits a pitch-perfect, irresistible lead performance from Eckhart, with his winning smile and genuinely happy-to-be-here look. One of the movie’s themes is why Naylor would do the work he does. The answers range from paying the mortgage to relishing a challenge. The movie finally settles on “everyone has a talent” for its justification, and it wouldn’t wash if Eckhart’s skills as an actor weren’t up to the job.

A gallery of accomplished character actors lends colourful support. Besides those mentioned above, Adam Brody (The O.C.) is a scream as Rob Lowe’s sycophantic Hollywood assistant and Katie Holmes is spot-on as a sleazy little-girl journalist. I was only disappointed by Duvall, whose concern to humanise the Captain all but stripped him of his Southern eccentricity.

Reitman’s strangest decision, under the guise of misplaced “irony” no doubt, was to have no characters smoke during the movie. Since movies – and particularly American independent movies – are one of the last bastions of uninhibited smoking, it’s a bizarre choice. It also cripples any efforts at realism. Besides, we’ve already seen Eckhart smoke his way through films like In the Company of Men, so it seems plain perverse to relegate Naylor’s smoking habit off-screen (especially when it has a part to play in the plot). As a result, how you can take the movie’s protests about so-called political correctness seriously?

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originally posted: 08/12/06 02:45:48
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