Smoking. It’s evil. It kills. Everything kills. It’s not smoking that kills. It people killing people by making the choice to smoke. It’s all about choices. Your choice, my choice everyone’s choice smoking is a choice just like driving, deciding to get out of bed and having a mammogram. Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) makes a living justifying the existence and use of cigarettes by everyone. He’s a lobbyist. He’s there to argue that common sense and decency are malleable. He works for the Academy of Tobacco Studies where most of the studies about smoking goes on. That’s like letting companies dictate the studies that should be done about their medication; they’ll always design the studies to the best effect for the company. Nick uses the same arguments that Captains of Industry use to excuse gouging you for gas, medicine and any other essentials in life. Naylor and his friends (The MOD Squad or merchants of death) justify their existence by protecting the corporations of the world via spin. The spin suddenly changes when he becomes more than hated but a target and has to examine his core values. ***

Don’t worry there’s no come to Jesus moment because this is, after all, a satire and a very acidic one at that. Brilliantly acted, scripted and directed by Jason Reitman the film brilliantly captures Christopher Buckley’s book without being too literal. “Thank You for Smoking” features perfect casting as well. Aaron Eckhart is probably our most underrated actor. He’s brilliant at playing confident and conflicted equally well. It’s a marvelous film. ---

Image & Sound:

“Thank You for Smoking” isn’t all smoke and mirrors; it looks marvelous because the transfer has been done with great skill. Colors are robust, flesh tones look natural and the audio sounds very good. Since this is primarily a dialogue driven film the directional effects are rare but nicely used when they do appear. ---

Some are cooler than what you’ll find in a carton of Kool; We get a feature length commentary one with Jason Reitman solo and a second with the director and actors Aaron Eckhart and David Koechner. There are also deleted scenes with optional commentary by Reitman. “The Charlie Rose Show” episode featuring Buckley, producer David Sax, Aaron Eckhart and director Reit man discussing the challenges of translating Buckley’s novel to the screen also appears. ***

“Unfiltered Comedy” is a making of featurette with the standard clips and talking heads but it’s the comments that make it worthwhile to watch. “America: Living in Spin” features plenty of clips from the film along with cast and crew discussing the world of spin that we live in where everything bad can be good. We also get a trio of galleries including poster art, behind-the-scenes stills and a storyboard which focuses on the first 15 minutes of the film. From the storyboard it looks to me like they were originally aiming for Oprah for the talk show. We wind things up with the theatrical trailer and a promo spot for the inspired soundtrack. ---

Final Words: