Thank you for smoking - a review

Rating: 3.5/4

Why would someone hold on to a job that is considered despicable by most of everybody else?

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), a spokesman for Big Tobacco corporation, does it because he loves his job. His job is to publicly defend Big Tobacco against any health claims and save business from anti-smoking propaganda. To him, its never about whats right and wrong, its always about winning and losing an argument. More often than not, he wins because he is a smooth talker. In one particularly ludicrous (and hilarious) argument, he accuses an anti-smoking campaigner of wishing for the death of a cancer patient to appear right, while arguing that Big Tobacco would only wish for the patient to live because they would be losing a customer.

The movie is populated by a host of colorful characters that include :

Nick's wannabe nemesis, Vermont Senator Finisterre (William H. Macy) is as incompetent as his aide whom he chides for being incompetent.

Nick's real nemesis, Heather Holloway (a stunningly-beautiful-as-always Katie Holmes) of the Washington Probe, who screws him(literally) and then screws him (not literally)

Nick's closest and equally unscrupulous friends (Maria Bello, Davis Koechner) who are his counterparts in the alcohol and firearms corporations

Jeff (Rob Lowe) as 'the man who invented product placement'

The movie does not take sides. It only has fun pitting characters, with lot to lose, against each other and laughs along with us. It is fresh, witty, intelligent and an hour-and-half well-spent.