Thank You for Smoking

Director:  Jason Reitman
Year Released:  2005
Rating:  2.0

Aaron Eckhart, a lobbyist for the Tobacco Industry (boo!) with a permanent grin on his All-American face, faces opposition in the form of a goody-goody Senator from Vermont (William H. Macy), a Hollywood agent (Rob Lowe, suitably spacey), actual people with lung cancer, a crafty newspaper woman (Katie Holmes) and faceless anti-Smoking terrorists. Eckhart's stellar performance covers up some of the flaws in this relatively obvious picture - the father-son issues that crop up in the last act are particularly lame (not just the Eckhart-and-his-boy connection, but Eckhart and his work-father, Robert Duvall) and the fact that Hollywood types look worse than the Smoking Conglomerate is misguided. I like the attempt at shirking P.C. ideas for more of a 'middle ground' (the "Libertarian" angle) in the debate - it's about personal choice! - but I also find it highly, highly dubious that a movie called Thank You for Smoking doesn't show a single person smoking (but people dying from smoking).

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