No matter how hard 'Big Tobacco' tries, its efforts to improve the image of the evil weed are always being shouted down by hordes of pesky health freaks, do-gooders and scare-mongers.

But bulls**t doesn't come with a health warning.

That's why the anti-anti-smoking lobby - aka the 'Academy Of Tobacco Studies' - has its own lucky strike in Nick Naylor (Eckhart). With his reassuring smile and smartly skewed reasoning, nobody’s better at blowing smoke up the public's wazoo.

"If you can argue correctly," he tells his son Joey (Bright, Godsend) "you're never wrong." Nick is divorced. Nobody's perfect.

Nick's best friends are lobbyists too. Polly (Bello) spins the bottle for the alcohol industry while Bobby Jay (David Koechner, Anchorman) dodges bullets for the gun brigade. They call themselves the 'MOD squad' (merchants of death).

But even though Nick's out there high-fiving teenage cancer victims on TV and twisting the knickers of tobacco-phobic Senator Finistirre (William H. Macy), it's an uphill struggle for the Academy.

"We sell cigarettes. They're cool. They're available. And they're addictive! Our job's been done for us!" barks Nick's irascible boss BR (J.K. Simmons).

Ever the responsible parent, Nick takes young Joey on a business trip. First, he makes a deal with a Hollywood agent (Rob Lowe) to make smoking in movies cool again. Then he buys off a dying Marlboro man (Sam Elliott).

But when kidnappers nearly kill him with nicotine patches and his fling with a foxy reporter (Katie Holmes) comes back to haunt him, Nick's conscience kicks in... A bit.

Retaining much of the cheerily irreverent dialogue from Christopher Buckley's 1994 novel, this is a well-cast, confident and refreshingly un-PC debut from Jason Reitman, son of Ghostbusters director Ivan.

Though nobody smokes a ciggie on screen (John Wayne tries in a film clip but gets shot before he can spark up), Reitman just wants us to enjoy a crafty break from all the spin.

Elliott Noble