As Nick Naylor, chief lobbyist for Big Tobacco, Aaron Eckhart tempers his gleefully loathsome persona from Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men with a seductively serpentine charm and wit. As he tells his idolizing son, Joey (a vacuous Cameron Bright), “Argue correctly, and you’re never wrong.” Barely mentioned in Christopher (son of William) Buckley’s 1994 novel of the same name, Joey has become a major supporting player, a trite ploy to sway sympathy toward Nick’s “yuppie Mephistopheles” that acts like a cancer in Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman’s debut feature. Much of Buckley’s arch dialogue is retained (and most of a kidnapping plot line is, fortunately, snuffed), however, and that allows hilarious turns by Maria Bello and David Koechner as Nick’s alcohol‑ and firearm-lobbyist pals, the MOD (“merchants of death”) Squad, but it’s all filtered through a satirical blend that begs a point of view.
