Thank You for Smoking

Lights, cigarettes, cameras, action!

Right up until you sit down in your cinema seat and actually watch Thank You for Smoking you’ll have little idea what type of film it’s meant to be. It has Adam Brody, so maybe it’ll be funny. But wait, there’s Robert Duvall, perhaps it’s a serious flick. Oh, hang on… isn’t that Aaron Eckhart? Wasn’t he in Erin Brockovich? Maybe it’ll be hard-hitting and controversial?

To be frank, Thank You is all of these things – somehow, it magically taps into a combination of themes and devices to entertain and educate the audience.

Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, Vice President of the Academy of Tobacco Studies, an institution established by numerous big cigarette companies, or ‘big tobacco’. In reality, Naylor is a professional spin doctor, his job being to appear in public as ‘the face’ of smoking and fend of claims that cigarettes are a bad thing. Although Naylor is extremely good at his job, he knows that as the spokesperson for big tobacco, he is a target for the public’s anger. What he doesn’t realise is the potential for that anger to manifest itself in unfortunate circumstances.

The movie follows Naylor’s career, including his somewhat troubled family life. Separated from his wife (Kim Dickens), Naylor makes the resolution to get more involved with his son, Joey (Cameron Bright). As a result, Joey begins to travel with his father, witnessing Naylor do everything from paying off the Marlboro man to fielding death threats on national television.

The source of entertainment in the movie is provided by Naylor’s spin work, and Eckhart plays the role flawlessly. The opening scene, for example, sees Naylor outnumbered on a Jerry Springer-like talk show by members of various health organisations and a bald ‘Cancer Boy’ to draw sympathy from the crowd. What should have been a televised lynching of Naylor and tobacco is somehow transformed into its promotion – all thanks to Naylor’s quick wit and ability to talk circles around his less silver-tongued competition.

As you might expect, there is a message in the film – it’s just that it
is not about smoking. The tobacco argument in Thank You for Smoking simply provides a foundation for screenwriter/director Jason Reitman (and indeed Chris Buckley, the writer of the novel that the movie is based on) to satirise corporations, television and even governments and their attempts to influence through advertising, campaigning or good old fashioned bribery. The movie attempts to show that freedom of choice is as important as, say, one’s health. In fact, much of Naylor’s spinning relies on leveraging the common sense behind this argument.

Thank You for Smoking is a short, but well-executed film and while it could benefit from a tighter plot and the cinema environment does little for it, this is one film you should definitely not pass up.