Thank you for Smoking

REVIEW: THANK YOU FOR SMOKING (Fox Searchlight) Directed by Jason Reitman

This satirical first feature from director Jason Reitman tracks Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a flack for Big Tobacco. Under pressure to keep alive the industry message that smoking is not bad for you, Nick undertakes an aggressive campaign to enhance its image that involves using cancer patients as pawns on daytime talk shows, enlisting studio execs to get more characters smoking in movies, and delivering hush money to the terminally ill Marlboro Man. The casting of Katie Holmes as an ambitious reporter does little to diminish the film's contention that we live in an absurd world. But as an allegory for how mediated, corrupt, and irresponsibly managed the public discourse on important issues has become in America, it's a furious, funny, and idiosyncratic piece of work.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning