This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

Last night Cesca and I watched the new George Clooney movie “Michael Clayton”:

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house “fixer” at one of the largest cor­por­ate law firms in New York. A former crim­inal pro­sec­utor, Clayton takes care of Ken­ner, Bach & Ledeen’s dirti­est work at the behest of the firm’s co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pol­lack). Though burned out and hardly con­tent with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed busi­ness ven­ture and mount­ing debt have left Clayton inex­tric­ably tied to the firm. At U/North, mean­while, the career of lit­ig­ator Karen Crowder (Tilda Swin­ton) rests on the multi-million dol­lar set­tle­ment of a class action suit that Clayton’s firm is lead­ing to a seem­ingly suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. But when Ken­ner Bach’s bril­liant and guilt-ridden attor­ney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkin­son) sab­ot­ages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest chal­lenge of his career and his life

What is it with George these days? The last 4 or 5 movies he has been involved with have all been ser­i­ously excel­lent. Whatever is lead­ing to the rhythm he has found, I thank the god’s for it. Here we see George mak­ing some very clever pro­du­cer decisions. He knows that the back­ground plot to the movie; the law case; is incred­ibly lame. I was able to sum it up to Cesca (who wasn’t pay­ing atten­tion — tisk!) with the simple description:

“Its just like the Erin Brock­ovich story”.

Its a hard rock life

The case is in effect a MacGuffin designed to act as motiv­a­tion for the char­ac­ters extreme decisions and actions. Another MacGuffin is put in place for Clooney, with the pres­sure being put on him to clear his brother’s debts. This is basic stuff.

So why the high score?

The high score is because Clooney has filled out the story by pick­ing some of the best act­ors alive today.

Firstly we have him­self, and boy is he good. He always reminds me of act­ors like Con­nery, in that he mainly plays him­self, but he does it with a lot of con­vic­tion and style. Also lead­ing the pack has to be the uni­ver­sally acclaimed Tom Wilkin­son. His softly manic per­form­ance as Edens is excel­lently real­ised and express­ive as he regains his child­hood free­dom, if only for a little while. I love the moment when, after people had been almost baby talk­ing him for most of the film, he sud­denly snaps back into the ninja-killer law­yer he really was for just a moment of clar­ity. But, these excel­lent per­form­ances are out­shined by Tilda.

I’ve always had a thing for Tilda after see­ing her many years ago in the bril­liant Orlando. The final look in that movie (as she breaks the forth wall), won her a fan for life. Here she gives us a per­fect char­ac­ter study of someone will­ing to do any­thing to take away almost over­whelm­ing fear. This fear is, I feel, almost a sort of addic­tion for her char­ac­ter as she struggles when on her own in con­trolling her burst­ing emo­tions, which in front of oth­ers are clin­ic­ally pro­fes­sional. Tilda really got into the look of the role and even gained weight to fill out the busi­ness clothes of a hard nosed bitch. For the nor­mally very thin act­ress, this prob­ably made her abil­ity to play dis­com­fort a lot bet­ter, as the usu­ally svelte Tilda would have dis­played far too much phys­ical con­fid­ence for the part. Here she fairly itches in the body of Karen Crowder and at one moment actu­ally shakes with fear.

In fact, think­ing about it, addic­tion is a big part of this film. Clooney’s char­ac­ter is fight­ing a pre­vi­ous gambling addic­tion, his brother was/is an alco­holic and Edens is a manic depress­ive on pills to con­trol his mood swings. Yep, these are fucked up people all try­ing to win some sort of redemp­tion. Of course, Clooney is the char­ac­ter we hope will win through and the final con­front­a­tion is very satisfying.

A lot of films are car­ried by the act­ors strug­gling with a poor plot and this film could be judged in this way if it wasn’t for the qual­ity of the act­ing and the smooth­ness of the dir­ec­tion. This is a film for film fans. One to watch for the love of good act­ing and although it is not going to be as remembered as long as other recent releases (There Will Be Blood, for example) it is def­in­itely in the same league.

8/10

Pop­ular­ity: unranked [?]

Related Posts

• No Related Posts