(published April 2006 | Whole Life Review)
Reel Power
Thank You For Smoking
Directed by Jason Reitman,
Starring Aaron Eckhardt, Maria Bello, Cameron Bright, Katie Holmes
Limited theatrical release March 17, 2006
“We don’t sell Tic Tacs, we sell cigarettes. And they’re cool, available, and addictive. The job is almost done for us,” says a tobacco executive in Thank You For Smoking, Jason Reitman’s big-screen debut. And although lines like this could come across as overly sarcastic, overly serious or preachy, Reitman’s deft treatment of Charles Buckley’s 1994 novel hits just the right tone: tongue-in-cheek, wry, clever and hilarious.
The casting is genius: Aaron Eckhart makes the perfect Nick Naylor, the charming spokesman for Big Tobacco who’d be detestable if he weren’t so entertaining (or so good at his job); William H. Macy as the flappable Vermont official trying to pass an anti-tobacco bill; Rob Lowe as the obnoxious Hollywood exec who agrees to help Naylor “make smoking cool again”; and Katie Holmes as a conniving but naive reporter who screws Naylor (in more ways than one).
And though it does have an agenda (hint: it’s not a love letter to the tobacco industry), it’s remarkably even-handed, treating both Big Tobacco and its opponents to the same unblinking satire and sarcasm.
The result is a blissfully well-paced and engaging film that’s well-worth watching.
Paradise Now
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad,
Starring Kais Nasshef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal
Out on DVD March 21, 2006
It’s no wonder that both Israelis and Palestinians opposed Hany Abu-Assad’s film Paradise Now: in the end, neither side looks particularly good, and no one emerges morally victorious. The movie is much truer to the issues and therefore much better than that.
The award-winning work follows two Palestinian would-be suicide bombers (Kais Nasshef and Ali Suliman) from the moment they get their orders until their mission date, two days later. We see the mundane details of this process, the difficult conditions they’ll leave behind, the hints of family trauma that might have brought them to this point and glimpses of their community’s ambivalence about this “solution” to the Israeli problem. 
But though the film’s subject matter is timely, it is still more a story than a political statement or educational piece. And as a story, it’s a good one. The characters are sympathetic. The acting is stellar. The narrative is engaging. And the plot has plenty of suspenseful (yet not overplayed) twists and turns.
It may come up short as the definitive film on the current conflict in the West Bank, but that expectation might be too tall an order. What’s revolutionary about Paradise Now is that it’s showcasing the conflict at all.
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