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''The message Hollywood needs to send out is 'Smoking Is Cool!'''
Satirical comedy follows the machinations of Big Tobacco's chief spokesman, Nick Naylor, who spins on behalf of cigarettes while trying to remain a role model for his twelve-year-old son.
Aaron Eckhart: Nick Naylor
Thank you for Smoking was a lovely, wonderful surprise for me. Wasn't sure what to expect with this black comedy, and thankfully Thank you for Smoking didn't disappoint. Aaron Eckhart and Katie Holmes together on screen feels good, it feels like an echo of Dark Knight. But dreaming aside this is a very clever piece. It doesn't demote smoking rather it seemingly promotes the action, which seems controversial. As the film progresses we begin to wonder what the films purpose. Said purpose being that it's an evolution of ideas and characters revolving around the medium of smoking.
The aspects come across as a palette of colours. One hand we have a shady dark green which represents greed, red representing struggle and black showing a deathly conclusion. As the characters clash and interact we really feel ourselves bonding, especially to Aaron Eckhart's Nick Naylor. Nick becomes the center of our world, the anchor in which we experience scenarios and events with. Pleasingly as the middle looms, everything starts to fall apart for Nick and for his cause, Smoking. Which pretty much is the point, smoking is a dying pass-time, a relic of the past, an obsolete cancer. Yet for all its vices, it's not as bad as some things, which again beckons the magicalduality flip side of Thank you for smoking.
Cameron Bright as Joey Naylor, Nicks son, provides some awesome dialogue with Aaron. As does the rest of the cast, such as J.K. Simmons, Maria Bello, Rob Lowe and William H. Macy as a Senator.
''Robin Williger. He is a 15 year old freshman from Racine, Wisconsin. He enjoys studying history; he's on the debate team. Robin's future looked very, very bright. But recently he was diagnosed with cancer, a very tough kind of cancer. Robin tells me he has quit smoking, though, and he no longer thinks that cigarettes are cool.''
What Thank you for Smoking also provides us is an impressive blended score, crisp visuals, and most importantly clever surreal sequences that are genuinely captured and executed in dazzling composite ways. All these factors help get across the condemning of smoking, and the defense of its failings. As we come to the crunch, with a breath taking court case we come to what Thank you for Smoking is really about. It's a story not just about smoking but one in which a single man stands up for a cause, and for himself, and doesn't relent. A witty, persuasive master of spin and of twisting aspects, yet at the same time, speaking truth.
Overall, whether it be cheese, cars, aeroplanes that kill...smoking is something else that kills. Thank you for Smoking teaches us a very important lesson, and that lesson is indeed smoking is wrong but to stop people having free will and to stop people having a choice, is where democracy ends. So much money is made from smoking, so much from death, by the time we reach the conclusion, it's a clever twist of fate in which freedom isn't always risk free. We can't remove history but boy we can learn from it for a brighter future. Aaron Eckhart's narration and dialogue gets this message across all too well. Thank you for Smoking is a successful spin of entertainment and cleverness, which hits home with an important issue.
''That's the beauty of argument, if you argue correctly, you're never wrong.''
8/10
