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Tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) uses his verbal cunning to speak to the press in “Thank You For Smoking,” which opens today in Athens.

“Handsome devil,” the turn of phrase your grandma uses for Sean Connery, is the perfect way to describe actor Aaron Eckhart as Nick Naylor, the ruthless tobacco lobbyist he portrays in “Thank You For Smoking.”

In “Thank You,” he wears a gleaming mop of boyish blond hair and a devious grin that seems to imply he just stole your wallet and you’ll find out tomorrow. These conflicting features must work wonders when he thumps for tobacco in front of Congress.

In the beginning of the film, they certainly seem to do just that. Featured as a guest on a daytime talk show, Naylor is pigeon-holed as the evil cigarette advocate as he sits next to a young smoker dying of cancer and a lawyer. With his verbal cunning, he escapes humiliation and derision, asking: Why would tobacco companies want the boy, a customer, to die? It is in the company’s interest to keep him alive and smoking, while the lawyer wants him dead to prove a point.

It is hard to believe a studio audience would immediately warm up to such crass logic (they do), but it is plausible that Naylor’s appearance on the show makes him a god in the realm of the cigarette industry. Very quickly, however, Naylor is faced with a new challenge: A Vermont senator (William H. Macy) is developing legislation that would require a skull and crossbones on all cigarette packages. I believe the phrase is “P.R. nightmare.”

That logo that fictional Sen. Ortolan Finistirre proudly unveils on television is indicative of where “Thank You” soars as a satire and stays grounded sometimes as a comedy. Such legislation seems outlandish, but it doesn’t seem entirely implausible in a day and age in which smokers are casually incriminated by others who believe their lack of puffing means default entrance to the pearly gates. Other aspects of “Thank You” — like J.K. Simmons of the “Spider-Man” films playing Naylor’s boss — veer toward the obnoxiously cartoonish.

As Naylor devises a strategy for an eventual congressional testimony, the film gets wackier and expands into a network of supporting characters: Naylor’s son, alcohol and gun lobbyists he often lunches with, the original (now cancer-ridden) Marlboro man (Sam Elliott), a kimono-loving movie executive (Rob Lowe) and a newspaper reporter (Katie Holmes) who has a strange take on the phrase “off the record.” First-time writer-director Jason Reitman smoothly weaves Naylor in and out of these subplots, creating a range of witty and memorable little scenes.

It’s a satire — so what is it saying? Thankfully, “Thank You” doesn’t seem to have an agenda — it is content with skewering both big-time tobacco companies and lobbyists and, well, everyone else. A telling detail, however, comes late in the film and involves a chief culinary export of Finistirre’s state. Reitman doesn’t imply that cigarettes don’t eventually kill some people; he is simply implying that there are many other dangers to human health we often seem to push aside in favor of the easy target.

As a satire, “Thank You for Smoking” might take a few easy targets itself, but it is enjoyable in its own wickedly funny way, and any flaws are harder to see when Eckhart — giving a master class in breezy bravado — flashes that smile.