Thank You For Smoking film review

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THANK YOU FOR SMOKING

Nick Naylor is a morally reprehensible, ferociously smart, egotistical charmer. "You know the guy that can pick up any girl. I'm like him on crack," Naylor intones at the beginning by way of a warning. Aaron Eckhart has shown a gift for imbuing disarmingly blunt rogues with a certain appeal. In the wrong hands Naylor could easily have come across as two dimensional, but Eckhart's absorbing performance brings out all his complexities and ambiguities.

As the Vice President of the Academy Of Tobacco Studies, Naylor concedes his "job requires a moral flexibility most people don't have." His job, basically, is convincing the world of the virtues of smoking. A tough task in this present health conscious, PC world, but in the acerbic and acutely observed satire Thank You For Smoking, it's one that makes for hilarious and compelling viewing. Written and directed by Jason Reitman (son of director Ivan of Ghostbusters and Twins fame), TYFS is based on Christopher Buckley (son of political commentator and author William F. Buckley)'s smart and witty novel.

While others have labeled Nick a "yuppie Mephistopheles" and his young son calls him the "sultan of spin", Nick refers to himself as a "lobbyist." In that capacity he has cleaved a high profile as "the face of cigarettes" by going on television to argue the cause of the tobacco industry. To him it's the challenge that he revels in. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence and public opinion, his mastery of manipulation invariably defeats less impassioned opposition. "That's the beauty of argument," he confides to his preternaturally smart son Joey (Cameron Bright), "If you argue correctly you're never wrong."

Always looking for new opportunities to improve the image of cigarettes, Naylor hits on the idea of getting his organisation in bed with the movies. "The message Hollywood needs to send out is smoking is cool," he advocates. The scenes when Naylor descends on LA and meets up with top agent Jeff Megall (Rob Lowe) and his assistant Jack (Adam Brody) are full of hilarious and withering indictments of Hollywood, no doubt authenticated by Reitman's privileged perspective.