Thank You For Smoking

It’s an outrageous gambit - to make a tobacco lobbyist (In the Company of Men’s Aaron Eckhhart) the hero, a Vermont senator (William H. Macy) the villain and to bring audiences onside with the hero’s fellow Merchants of Death - alcohol lobbyist (Maria Bello) and gun lobbyist (David Koechner). Oh, and it’s funny, at times side-splittingly so. That’s what director Jason Reitman (son of Ghostbusters director Ivan) manages in this brilliant, incisive satire. But the film isn’t about the evils of smoking, it’s about spin and how American culture is dominated by it - from advertisers, news organisations, Hollywood producers and politicians. Gleefully, shockingly politically incorrect, it pulls no punches from the get-go, when Eckhart’s Nick Naylor proposes that it’s in the tobacco industry’s best interest to keep cancer sufferers alive and smoking. Based on conservative pundit Christopher Buckley’s book, Thank You For Smoking owes its charm to Eckhart’s American everyman smile; he could sell ice to Iqualuit, as the saying goes. The best comedy always pushes buttons and this hits them with a "no whammies” vigour unseen in many years and that’s part of the sheer joy of this politically-incorrect exercise. The DVD offers up extras like it knows no special edition is coming this way; two commentaries, a "making of,” featurettes on spin, a raft of deleted scenes and several interview appearances all explore the nature of political communication in our modern age. (Fox)