Thank You For Smoking

This movie released in 2005, is rated R, and lasts 1 hours 31 minutes.

The director wrote the screenplay, a youngster named Jason Reitman, who has been involved in little work as a director, see Juno, Consent and a few episode of The Office.

The story is about an effective over the top tobacco lobbyist. His intent is to promote his product by getting Hollywood to write roles that have cool and sexy leads with a nicotine jones. In the aftermath of his dam the torpedoes attitude, his son becomes a protege in is manipulative debating skills and is exposed as a schill for bug tobacco by a sexy manipulative reporter. All is brought to light in the end during a enjoyable rendition of a worthless congressional hearing (sound familiar?).

The actors are....

• Joan Lunden play herself at the start of the movie in a satirical look at talk shows.
• Aaron Eckhart in the lead role play Nick Naylor, the lobbyist with a name and attitude like a porn star.
• J.K. Simmons plays BR, Nick's boss at the Consolidated Tobacco Company. Simmons played Dr. Emil Skoda on Law & Order and is a current regular in The Closer.
• Maria Bello plays Nick's ex-wife Polly Baily. A woman with some anger to express.
• Robert Duvall plays the Captain, owner of the Consolidated Tobacco Company.
• Katie Holmes plays Heather Holloway, the reporter that gets Nick to tell all by using her personal skill. If she is using those skills on her gay husband the kids might be his.
• Rob Lowe plays Jeff Megall a self absorbed Hollywood mogul.
• Sam Elliot plays Lorne Lutch the original Marlboro Man who has contracted lung cancer and is pissed about it.
• Dennis Miller plays himself. See Joan Lunden.
• William H. Macy plays Senator Ortolan Finistirr, the congressman from Vermont with a green purpose. There was a great Georgia artist named Howard Finster who lived up in Summerville, his art was used in some Coke commercials and REM album covers in the eighties and the nineties. He passed in 2001, but when I was going to Summerville regularly, that art was easily purchased.

This movie gets a score of 23 of 50, a low score. I did enjoy the movie for is thorough sense of sarcasm.

• Character development 4 of 10. The central character does show that he has a heart by the end of the movie but continues to insist on the right to personal choice. Nice but not really development.
• Screenplay 5 of 10. Funny in a sarcastic manner, owing to the original writer of the book.
• Acting 4 of 10. Eckhart does a good job in the alpha male role, Duvall should be prouder than to accept such roles of obvious caricature.
• Cinematography 3 of 10. Nothing special.
• Concept 7 of 10. A snip of life in the body of a lobbyist pumping a product with obvious negatives.