Sunday, December 17, 2006

thank you

Thank You for Smoking was fantastic! It had some of that Fight Club snarkiness and self-awareness, but it was also bitterly and brutally funny in a very dark humor sort of way considering that our hero is a Merchant of Death, a lobbyist for Big Tobacco who firmly believes as a point of arguing his point that he doesn't have to convince anyone that he is right, he just needs to convince people that you are wrong...and thus he wins the point because if you are wrong, then he must be right.

He's good. He's very good at it.

I feel like I should be going to hell for wanting to cheer for Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), but damn, the man is slick and smooth and not at all greasy (though the scene with the Marlboro Man (Sam Elliott) is another of those brutally sad but skillfully played scenes).

It's a short movie, only 90 minutes or so, but director Jason Reitman (son of Ghostbusters director Ivan) plays each minute for all that it is worth and lays out a damn good movie his first time out of the box.

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