Eckhart's affable yuppie Mephistopheles.
It's a truth the Spielbergs of the world don't always seem to acknowledge: Evil doesn't always brood and lurk like Ralph Fiennes in an SS uniform. It more often sports a sunny, disarming grin and looks like your next-door-neighbor.
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Jason Reitman has adroitly adapted the already wickedly funny novel,
Thank You for Smoking
, by Christopher Buckley, and the result is a lucid skewering of the way we deal in what the film's hero affably terms "moral flexibility." Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) is a smoker. He's also lobbyist and spokesman for "The Academy of Tobacco Studies," a research institute funded by Winston-Salem for the purpose of
obfuscating the health risks of cancer sticks. Blonde and guileless, the so-called "Sultan of Spin" can manipulate; butter wouldn't melt in his mouth as he wipes the floor with any anti-smoking activists foolhardy enough to take him on-particularly Senator Ortolan Finistirre (William H Macy). The gentleman from Vermont introduces legislation requiring cigarette packages bear a skull and crossbones, along with the word POISON, and he publicly dares Nick to testify on behalf of Big Tobacco before the congressional committee. Meanwhile, the Sultan's gone out on a limb with his campaign to return cigarettes to their former glamorous status in the movies; on an LA trip to hobnob with an eccentric, powerful movie producer (Rob Lowe), Nick takes along his son Joey (Cameron Bright). But
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Joey needs a role model, and his "what does Dad do all day" questions are of an innocently penetrating nature. Nick begins to feel less and less certain of the ethical validity of his profession, at the most inconvenient of times. Then there's his indiscretion with a young journalist (Katie Holmes)…can tobacco's golden boy survive a very public fall from grace?
Eckhart's Bill Clinton chin dimple and Adonis-like square-cut features lend hilarious affect to Buckley's dry dialogue. Peppered throughout are brilliant scenes with Nick and his two best friends, an odd
little cadre of lobbyists who call themselves the "Merchants of Death" (Maria Bello representing alcohol and David Koechner defending the right to bear firearms). Their speeded-up analyses of per diem death rates are high-end satire, though more in the spirit of
Wag the Dog
and less grim than
American Psycho
or even
Fight Club
.
"It's
American
," Koechner tells Eckhart-which may be the only thing we'll have to say for ourselves, if the day of judgment comes any time soon. If we can't light up, can we at least lighten up?
