Thank You For Smoking

Herald rating: * * * *

Not a single character lights up in this fast-paced satire. Even a tobacco baron's iconic cigar remains unlit, although the main character's smoker status is alluded to. It's that kind of movie: in seeking to skewer the excesses of Big Tobacco, it remains aloof from its charms.

As a satire on the dark art of the spin-doctor, the cleverly titled comedy may lack the bite of Wag The Dog (which was transformed by subsequent events into something close to documentary). But as a slick, shallow and often very funny send-up, it's a surefire entertainment.

Eckhart, in his juiciest role since the cynical tormentor in In the Company of Men (now almost a decade old), plays Nick Naylor, a silver-tongued spokesman for the tobacco industry. He's newly divorced, guilty about how little he sees his son Joey (Bright) and more than a tad uncomfortable about justifying to the boy the way he makes his living.

But damn, he's good. That much is plain from the first scene in which he's on an Oprah-style show alongside distinguished doctors and a hairless boy with cancer - and he wins hands down.

But Big Tobacco faces a larger challenge: smoking rates are falling and Nick is charged with getting cigarettes back in the hands of Hollywood stars.

Meanwhile, a midwestern senator (Macy) is pushing a law that will make a skull and crossbones and the word "Poison" the default design for cigarette packets.

The film unfolds episodically but at a pace that keeps it engaging, and it's full of marvellous performances. The always delightful Duvall plays Big Tobacco's big cheese as a man who refers to his opposition as "the whole health aspect", Rob Lowe is a deliciously oily Hollywood mover and shaker, and Sam Elliott, the Marlboro Man who is dying of lung cancer, is the film's serious centre.

There is a great running gag in which Nick lunches with PR flacks for alcohol (Bello) and the gun industry (Koechner), making a trio known as the MOD (merchants of death) Squad: the scene in which they scorn each other's death tolls is wickedly funny but it's also the film's cruellest and most accurate jab.

Beside these razor-sharp characterisations, Holmes, as an investigative reporter, is spectacularly unconvincing and even the reliable Macy struggles with a character who is little more than a caricature.

Verdict: If The Insider had been a comedy, it might have smelled like this

Cast: Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello, David Koechner, Cameron Bright, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott, Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe, William H. Macy, Robert Duvall
Director: Jason Reitman
Running time: 92 mins
Rating: M, sex scenes and offensive language
Screening: Rialto