Enter the world of fast talking lobbyists

Ah, big tobacco. Every year its products contribute to a death toll that would make a regional conflict proud. Kills more than alcohol and guns combined. Loved the world over by its many consumers. \nAll the while, it remains a truly vilified corner of the market. It's an easy target. I mean, come on, man. It's big tobacco! You can't smoke in bars in New York anymore (let alone Bloomington). There's massive counter-advertising campaigns aimed at it. The government demands a Surgeon General's warning to be placed on every box.\nBut somehow, it survives. Still sells a lot of cigarettes. And this is due, in no small part, to people like Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart), big tobacco lobbyist and the fastest, smoothest motherfucker you've ever met. He talks like a divine wind. You won't even know what you're arguing about by the time he gets through with you.\nWhat's both funny and horribly depressing is this is an apparently semi-serious look at the way Washington works. Everyone is full of shit, everyone speaks in circles, everyone has an agenda. The great thing about "Thank You for Smoking" is it doesn't cut corners and focus on only cigarettes. This isn't another smarmy www.thetruth.com TV spot. Everyone gets it, equally.\nThe film achieves this by following Eckhart's lobbyist through a series of interactions with just the sort of characters you'd think would populate Washington's power circles -- who are fleshed out by a great supporting cast. You got J.K. Simmons who plays Eckhart's hard-charging Vietnam vet boss. William H. Macy plays the kind of progressive-environmentalist senator that makes about 60 percent of America cringe. Robert Duvall (greatest actor of our time) plays a julep-sipping tobacco tycoon, Rob Lowe is hysterical as a Hollywood poweragent with a flair for Asian design and Tom Cruise's baby mama (Katie Holmes) plays a journalist writing a profile piece on our main character. Toss in Maria Bello and David Koechner as equally despised mouthpieces for the liquor and gun lobbies and Sam Elliot as the cancer-ridden original Marlboro man, and you've got plenty of space for witty dialogue. With such a group of actors, the movie lies in the hands of its writers. Do they screw it up?\nNo. First-time director Jason Reitman (son of Ivan, the guy who directed "Ghostbusters") and friends do it right. It's funny, over in an hour and a half and has a halfway decent message about personal responsibility -- there is credence to the idea that if you smoke cigarettes in this modern age, you know what you're getting yourself into -- feigning ignorance to the dangers of smoking will only get you so far. \nSo yeah, man. Good movie. Check it out.