In an age where political correctness often overshadows broader issues, it is no wonder that an argument’s delivery can prove more decisive than its substance. Thank You for Smoking plays off this absurdity with a sinister humor that will tickle liberals as well as conservatives and smokers as well as nonsmokers.
The film commences with a showcase of chief tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor’s wicked talent for persuasion. As a guest on “The Joan Lunden Show,” Naylor, played with an unrelenting glib poise by Aaron Eckhart, manages to convince the audience and a 15-year-old lung cancer victim that those opposed to smoking want him to die, while tobacco companies have every interest in keeping their customers “alive and smoking.”
The suave lobbyist’s primary nemesis is Vermont Sen. Ortolan Finistirre, played by William H. Macy, whose office is heavily ornamented with a large collection of maple syrup bottles. Finistirre wants a warning label with a large skull to be placed on all cigarette cartons in lieu of the Surgeon General’s warning, which apparently encourages non-English speaking persons to die. The Senator’s sincere environmental concerns, however, stand little chance against the rhetorical art of the lobbyist.
Naylor undertakes the task of encouraging teen smoking through movies, in which, as he puts it, only “psychopaths and Europeans” seem to light up anymore. With an insomniac Japanophile executive played by Rob Lowe, he cooks up an outlandish sex scene involving Brad Pitt blowing smoke rings around Catherine Zeta Jones’s naked body, a humorous mockery of Hollywood’s lucrative talent for peddling garbage.
Eckhart and the film as a whole endure with an unfaltering and fast-paced rhythm, tightly packing a cynical wit that rarely ceases to entertain. Adding to the shameless humor is the M.O.D. squad, or “merchants of death,” comprised of Naylor and lobbyists for alcohol and firearms. The three meet over drinks and good ol’ fashioned apple pie smothered in American cheese, and they pride themselves on the number of deaths per year their respective industries incur.
Naylor’s success is temporarily offset, however, by seductive reporter Heather Holloway, played by Katie Holmes. Additionally, his visit with a cancerous Marlboro Man and, surprisingly, his own conscience makes him think twice about the nature of his lucrative occupation. However, Eckhart so poignantly embraces the role that it is nearly impossible to point a finger at the blatantly immoral tactics of his character. In fact, the film encourages nothing but a good-natured mockery of the overwhelming power of the spin-factor.
While this virtually smoke-free film won’t convince you to put out your cigarette, it may leave you feeling guilty for succumbing to the unremitting charm of the tobacco industry’s slickest merchant of death.
