Thank You for Smoking
"Michael Jordan plays ball. Charles Manson kills people. I talk." So says Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), tobacco lobbyist extraordinaire, in the ridiculously entertaining satire "Thank You for Smoking." Like its protagonist, the movie is smart, soulless, glib, and utterly charming -- just the thing to warm up a movie season that's been late to bloom.
Sticking close to the 1994 Christopher Buckley novel from which it's adapted, "Thank You for Smoking" gives the devil his due in the person of Nick, an unapologetic proponent of the all-American right to puff yourself to death. A vice president and spokesperson for the "Academy of Tobacco Studies," he's handsome, well dressed, and confident to the brink of arrogance, and he believes nothing he says except at the exact moment he's saying it. Nick's a tribute to the guiltless pleasures of spin, and, knowing he has a star-making part here, Eckhart eases into it like a man taking an Italian sports car into fifth gear. "You know that guy who can always pick up girls?" Nick asks. "I'm him. On crack."
So much hubris, such a long way to fall. A rising star at work, Nick is treated as a son by the julep-sipping General (Robert Duvall), and he's gearing up to address a government panel on cigarette labeling headed by Senator Finistirre (D-Vt.). The latter is played -- cheddar cheese, maple syrup, Birkenstocks, and all -- by the supremely prim William H. Macy.
Nick has a few chinks in his armor, though, despite those smug liquid lunches comparing casualty statistics with pals from the alcohol industry (Maria Bello) and gun lobby (David Koechner). He adores his son, if not his ex-wife (Kim Dickens), and he's susceptible to the wide hazel eyes of a Washington Probe reporter named Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes). He also presents an awfully tempting target to antismoking activists, who at one point wreak a vengeance too delicious to spoil here.
"Thank You for Smoking" gets us to love Nick almost as much as we hate him. Unruffled by conscience or political correctness, he's free to say what he wants, and much of the fun of the movie lies in hearing him patiently speak the unspeakable. "Think for yourselves! Challenge authority!" Nick exhorts his son's classmates on bring-in-your-dad day. "Instead of acting like sheep when it comes to cigarettes, maybe you should find out for yourself."
The larger point's nicely taken: Right or wrong, any argument in this country can be hijacked by turning it into a referendum on freedom. Overall, though, "Thank You for Smoking" demonstrates the joys of political satire without much of the bite. The film winks at corporate rapacity and Senate bloviators, at the media's round-the-clock Babel, but it rarely draws blood the way "Network," an obvious influence, did. Nick's a smoker, but we never actually see him smoke. In fact, we never see anyone smoke. The movie doesn't want to get its lungs dirty.
The director is Jason Reitman, son of "Ghostbusters" director Ivan Reitman, making his feature film debut. He has things to learn about shaping a scene, but he knows how to use a cast: In addition to those mentioned above, Sam Elliott plays a cancer-stricken Marlboro Man, while Rob Lowe anchors a brutally funny Hollywood sequence as a super-agent willing to arrange cigarette product placement in a spaceship movie. ("Wouldn't they blow up in an all-oxygen environment?" asks Nick, for once out of his depth.)
Holmes is underutilized and, yes, conspiracy mongers, her sex scene with Eckhart does feel oddly truncated. I doubt Tom Cruise was standing by with scissors; more likely, it's a bit of editing-room awkwardness from a filmmaker finding his sea legs. Still, how nice to find an American movie willing to poke us in the sensibilities, even if not very hard. Reitman takes to heart his hero's guilt-free motto: "If you argue correctly, you're never wrong." It'll be interesting to see what happens when and if he takes sides.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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