.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

It may be too early to begin giving films headlines such as "One of the Best of the Year". After all, when movies like The Shaggy Dog and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector can both crack and maintain their stays amongst top 10 weekly releases, you don't have to be Roger Ebert to realize (..or hope) that the best is yet to come.

However, every once and a while, an earlier studio release catches the eye and maintains our interest throughout all the summer blockbusters and winter Oscar hopefuls. Crash did it last year and both The Silence of the Lambs and Gladiator were early out-of-the-gaters that etched a space in our frontal lobes long enough to have us remember it when the golden statues were being handed out almost a year after their release.

Thank You For Smoking is one of those films. Based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Christopher Buckley Thank You For Smoking stars Aaron Eckhart as cigarette lobbyist Nick Naylor. Nick is probably the nicest guy that you could imagine working for an industry long fallen out of public favor. He has a sudden charm about him and coupled with his rugged good looks, you almost don't even seem to mind if he is twisting your words or making it so that the argument becomes so convoluted that you almost forget your first original thought.

That makes Nick Naylor the perfect fit for Big Tobacco and his unique argumentative skills are showcased in the very first scene where he sits amongst a panel of anti-smokers and a young boy stricken with cancer on the Joan Lunden talk show. Before the first commercial break, he hasn't so much as turned the audience over to his way of thinking, but he has them thinking in a different direction and that, my friends, is what he gets paid to do.

Thank You For Smoking is interesting in that although it makes its argument, the film uses the tobacco industry as a backdrop to tell the story of the struggles that Nick endures with family, with friends and with those that find him the most despicable person on the earth this side of Hitler.

His family of note is an ex-wife to which still speaks cordially, but otherwise has split with amicably and his young son, Joey (Cameron Bright). Joey is at that age where he is curious about everything his father does, and his interest allows Nick to bring him on business trips where Joey has the opportunity to be mentored in argumentative studies.

His friends are part of a self proclaimed MOD Squad (Merchants of Death) and consist of one pro-alcohol lobbyist (Maria Bello) and one pro-firearms representative (David Koechner). The three of them meet regularly and have intricately trivial and engaging conversations that include a provocative discussion on who represents the most worst product based on annual deaths in America.

Complicating matters are Nick's enemies which come in the form of many faces. There is the horny newspaper journalist, Heather Holloway (the soon to be Mrs. Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes) who seems to be using all of her God given assets to get information from Naylor for her article. There is the Senator from Vermont, played wonderfully by William H. Macy that has as his personal goal to warn the American public about the poisons of Nick's product. And to round out the trio of Anti-Naylor's is the general public that includes mysterious men who one day kidnap Nick and riddle him so full of Nicotine that it puts his life in jeopardy.

The supporting characters on both sides hit just the right notes to further Nick's ego and to allow us to be fascinated without being disgusted with Nick's line of business. Throw in Rob Lowe as a Hollywood hot shot that is negotiating with Nick to have Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones smoke after sex in a new Science Fiction film, Robert Duvall as the Captain of Big Tobacco and Sam Elliot as the elderly Malboro Man who is dying of lung cancer and is being paid for his silence. Each fascinating and how Nick deals with each persons situation, mesmerizing.

Thank You For Smoking is not going to be a movie that will show up in the top five of the film grosser any week. It isn't a film that is going to command the presence of a hundred copies at your local DVD store. But what Thank You for Smoking is, is a fantastic character study about the life of someone that ultimately sells death. And he does it so well.