According to Nick Naylor, American government is the best in the world because of the endless appeals system. He is quite sincere, one reason he is the tobacco lobby’s Sultan of spin - he doesn’t enjoy his job, he relishes every dirty second of it. Why? Because, as he tells his son by way of parental guidance, the beauty of argument is that if you do it right, you’re never wrong. And Nick never gets it wrong.

Eckhart grabs this anti-hero’s hero by the balls with a performance so dry, so black and so charismatic it leaves his In the Company of Men gasping for breath. Whether nailing a teenage cancer victim, skewering a gnarly anti-smoking senator or slicing the Marlbro Man, all opposition falls limp against Naylor’s charm. No matter how odious or unconscionable the argument, his command is so convincing you can’t help but cheer. Even when he is sabotaged by a scandal-seeking journo with ‘world class tits’, Naylor turns black into white then cleanses soul with the ‘yuppie Nuremberg defence’: gotta pay the mortgage.

First-timer Reitman doesn’t miss a satirical beat. Interstitials and freeze frames enliven ninety coal black, damned funny minutes that fly by in a haze of guilty pleasure, hacking coughs and laugh out loud moments. Eckhart’s flawless performance is the film’s backbone with razor sharp support from Macey, the mercurial Maria Bello and Rob Lowe as an oily agent. Cheerfully cynical and thunderously un-PC, Thank You For Smoking is, rather like Nick, the ultimate in elegant savagery.

// COLIN FRASER