View all Reviews by Bobo Deng

                   Thank You for Smoking – Jason Reitman
    

        After all the buzz around Thank You for Smoking at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 over Katie Holmes’s missing sex scene I was almost going to discount the movie entirely for being an “Oscar-worthy performance” vehicle for an untalented starlet.  Thankfully, the untalented starlet was only PR for the film’s sharp lines and charming charisma.  Reitman casts his A-listers in bit parts and supporting roles, while putting the brunt of the acting on Aaron Eckhart, who plays the lobbyist Nick Naylor.  Christopher Buckley penned the book of the same name during the 1990’s, when being politically correct first started being a hot topic.  Reitman makes the film applicable to the present, when political correctness is almost taken for granted, by taking an almost-documentary approach when telling the story.

            The film opens with an episode of the Joan Lunden Show, where various leaders of anti-smoking groups, a boy with smoke-caused cancer, and Big Tobacco representative Nick Naylor are guests.  The studio audience and the other talk show guests are essentially on a witch hunt to hang Big Tobacco, but are caught off-guard by Naylor’s smooth talking and quick diversion of the topic.  By the end of the show, the congressional aide from an anti-smoking senator’s office is antagonized, and the audience of moms and the “cancer boy” are on Naylor’s side.  The Joan Lunden Show is only the first taste of Nick Naylor’s gift of spin.

            As vice president of the Academy of Tobacco Studies, a goodwill organization funded by the big tobacco companies, Nick Naylor functions as damage control and projection of a positive image of Big Tobacco.  His life is as fabulous as it comes: trips in private jets, weekly meetings with the “M.O.D. Squad” (Merchants Of Death, comprised of the alcohol, arms, and tobacco industries), hobnobbing with powerful figures in government and entertainment, even affairs with hot reporters.  Any man would be jealous of his lifestyle.  Director Jason Reitman shows that Naylor is not entirely heartless despite representing an industry of death – when he feels that he is not spending enough time with his son, Naylor brings Joey on adventurous business trips, teaching him the principles of argument and impressing his son with the versatility of his profession (including escaping kidnapping).  At one point, Naylor is sent on a mission to deliver a suitcase of cash to the original “Marlboro Man,” and successfully talks his way from the wrong end of a pointed gun to walking away having accomplished his task.

            The climax of the film comes when confidential information that he shares with his mistress becomes material for her next article.  Katie Holmes is forgettable as the young ambitious reporter.  Naylor is faced with the biggest hurdle of his life when his own private life is involved with his equivocating public persona.