Thank You For Smoking **1/2 out of ****

Clever with a cold heart.

There are two kinds of high school debate: the classic Lincoln-Douglas singular clash over morals and values, and the more obscure (but more prestigious and interesting) policy debate, in which a team of two develops a plan to address singular problem. Immigration, for example. Or health care. Or foreign policy. To sit in on a round of this debate is to inhabit a world where, according to the affirmative team, the apocalypse is imminent if the plan is not adopted, and, according to the negative team, apocalypse is imminent if it is. And the kids speed spit the words auctioneer-style, the better to overwhelm the opponent with evidence, arguments, subpoints. A judge has to sort it all out, take on faith that the evidence says what the kids says it does, and tab a victor.

A lot of Washington lobbyists cut their teeth on this stuff, as do media pundits, lawyers, and GOP strategists named Karl Rove. Policy debate teaches a variant of the Michael Corleone philosophy: You can convince anyone of anything. Considering we live in an America that cuts taxes during a war we must win for our survival - but must also be won without a draft - well, this is a pretty true and murderous thing.

So "Thank You For Smoking," a clever satire about tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) just isn't sobering enough. It's engaging intellectually - enough so to recommend it - it's very funny, snarky, at times thoughtful. But writer-director Jason Reitman - son of 80s comedy icon Ivan Reitman - is comfortable right there. It's a solid debut, but he never lingers too greatly on Nick's life as a tool. Working from Christopher Buckley's novel, the movie puts Nick in a few tight spots and gives him pause, but its final scenes either reward Nick for his fraudulence or advance some libertarian philosophy not previously articulated. Nick may wiggle away to jerk chains for another focus group - but he's just running another hamster wheel.

The lead lobbyist for an "institute of tobacco studies," Nick is charged with insisting cigarettes are safe - he presents "facts" on talk shows and in congressional hearings - and fun, which he intends to do by partnering with a Hollywood agent/producer (Rob Lowe). He also has to pay off a former cigarette pitchman (Sam Elliott) dying of cancer while bedding an agenda-driven magazine reporter (Katie Holmes), which he fits around weekly lunches with The Merchants of Death, his lobbying pals from the alcohol and firearms industry. Nick's inquisitive son (Cameron Bright) is stuffed into several scenes as minor conscience, but mostly as a prompt for Nick's monologues about the American Way. And then there's a bizarre, left-field sequence that gives Nick a taste of the opposition and his own product.

There's a lot happening, and a lot of faces for Nick to wear. But Eckhart nails it. Maybe too well - he's too likable and having too good a time. Unlike Eckhart's attractive-yet-amoral persona in "In the Company of Men," Nick wears his burdens lightly, convinced his smooth resourcefulness can slip him out of jams. And it does, including a moment in which he's asked a question that any parent would answer one way, except Nick. Reitman's handling of this scene suggests he has a greater affinity for his lead than a sense for how pitiful it is to lie out of integrity for a faulty position. Reitman depicts of Holmes' character cynically too; reporters may not have scruples, but they have more savvy than this.

We're left with a distinct, original portrait of America that preaches moral equivalency years after the Big Tobacco question has been answered. A smarter movie than "Thank You for Smoking" doesn't pretend Nick got out just before the roof caved in, but shows a tobacco lobbyist in post-lawsuit era free to admit cigarettes kill to a nation happy to smoke anyway. I'm looking at a courtyard full of smokers right now, who will return to work in 10 minutes to pass another wave of smokers. Few of them - maybe none of them - will see this movie. What Jason Reitman and Nick Naylor do, the nicotine does so much better.