Jason Reitman's debut as writer-director is a witty, cynical, spin-doctoring masterclass. For the film to work, it's essential for its morally flexible lead character to be at least partly likeable, and Aaron Eckhart pulls this off - a real feat, especially as he is still best remembered for playing one of the most reprehensible screen characters of all time in In the Company of Men.

It's part of the film's slyness that nobody in it ever smokes and that tobacco boss JK Simmons - abrasive as ever - sums up his product so perfectly: "They're cool, available and addictive - the job is almost done for us." Much of the dialogue, and most of Eckhart's pithy monologues, come straight from Christopher Buckley's 1994 book, written before the cigarette companies coughed up (sorry) a $250bn settlement in 1998.

The presence of Rob Lowe as the tobacco lobby's Hollywood conduit reminds you that dialogue has rarely been this snappy since The West Wing left our screens. And how much would baccy bosses pay to have Brad Pitt and Catherine Zeta-Jones blow smoke rings on each other's naked bodies in a movie (the proposal here), given its claim that RAVs (Russians, Arabs and villains) are now the screen's only smokers where once it was Bogart, Bacall and Bette?

That's one of the film's cunningly subversive but shockingly believable ideas put across with panache by a strong cast - Robert Duvall, William H Macy and Sam Elliott are all present and correct and sweet little Katie Holmes plays a mephistophelian seductress rather well.