Thank You For Smoking
Pitch black comedy is
tricky to pull off. If you go too far, you can be seen as being cruel
and heartless. Not far enough and you are pulling your punches.
Well, one thing is for
sure. Thank You For Smoking pulls no punches.
Instead, it is a
surprisingly funny look at the heart -- or lack of heart -- of darkness.
It all rises or falls on the strength of its central figure. In Aaron
Eckhart, the movie has found the perfect front man -- the poster child for
handsome, slick amorality.
Not that it is a surprise
that he can pull it off. Eckhart has almost made a specialty of
playing the glitzy moral bankruptcy behind an all-American face and a burly
chin ever since his breakout role in Neil Labute's In the Company of Men.
Eckhart plays Nick Naylor,
a man who happily acknowledges that his job puts him at a lower public
opinion level than child molesters. Nick works as a lobbyist who
speaks up for the big tobacco companies. He glibly admits that he is
despised for his job as a mouthpiece for a company that kills over a
thousand people a day. He takes pride in spinning evilness.
In the world of Thank
You For Smoking, though, everyone is as gleefully unethical, including
the other lobbyists (Maria Bello and David Koechner), the execs (Robert
Duvall and J.K. Simmons), the politicians (William H. Macy and Todd Louiso),
the media (Katie Holmes), even the victims (Sam Elliott).
Thank You For Smoking
is based on Christopher (son of William F.) Buckley's incendiary book of
the same title. It is by far the biggest directing project in the
career of Jason Reitman (son of Ghostbusters and Stripes
director Ivan Reitman) and it shows the old man's comic touch. If the
movie ends up softballing it a little more than the book did, it still makes
its share of pointed shots and accusations.
(3/06)
Dave
Strohler
Copyright ©2006
PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: April 8, 2006.
