Thank You for Smoking, which I saw tonight, is a consistent, constant farce, yet doesn’t so much mock the bullheadedness and influence of the tobacco lobby as it shows how easy it can be to convince anyone of anything.
Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, a smooth and confident Big Tobacco lobbyist not nearly as despicable as his characters in Neil LaBute’s late-’90s double-whammy of In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors. His only friends are key lobbyists for the alcohol and firearms industries; they go out for dinner together regularly and call themselves the M.O.D. Squad, for “Merchants of Death.”
Although the film’s pacing is so speedy and the dialogue so crackly (via the screenplay adapted by 29-year-old director Jason Reitman), there’s a lot of humor milked from some obvious setups that seem like little set pieces: Nick somehow emerging victorious from a live talk show panel that includes health professionals and a bald teenager with smoking-induced cancer, Nick following-through on his brainstorm to get cigarette smoking back into movies, Nick paying off a cancer-ridden former Marlboro Man (the crusty Sam Elliott), Nick embarrassing his young son (Cameron Bright) during Bring Your Parent to School Day. If fact, some heartfelt moments that keep the movie from descending completely into pure satire are when Nick spends time with his estranged son, in whom he instills confidence and a spookily strong ability to debate and question authority.
Other strong performances include William H. Macy as a Grape Nut senator from Vermont who’s Nick’s most outspoken opponent until a wicked turnabout, and J.K. Simmons, who plays Nick’s boss, Budd “B.R.” Rohrabacher, combining nonstop R Rating-justified cursing with the rapid-fire bluster of his Jonah Jameson character in the Spider-Man films.