Michael Clayton

George Clooney is the man, plain and simple. He is a T.V star who seemed to luck into a big movie star, without a huge hit to his name for many years. He ruined the first Batman franchise (his words) and seemed destined to be a nobody and then something happened. That something was Steven Soderbergh. They hooked up for Out of Sight and all of a sudden all of Clonney's woes were gone. He was transformed into the coolest guy on the planet. Ladies move him guys want to kick it with him in his Mansion in Italy and we all want to watch him on screen. However, he is something more. He is a man who will take a dramatic pay cut to do a project he cares about. He got paid next to nothing to act in Goodnight and Good luck and even less to act in Syriana. Now he does it again with Michael Clayton. Originally Clooney wanted to act and direct in this but Tony Gilroy (writer for the Bourne movies) wrote a draft of the script and he and Clooney got together and Clooney liked what Gilroy wanted to do so he agreed to just act in it. How did it work out for them?


Michael Clayton (Clooney) is a man down on his luck. He is a gambling addict who also just lost a small fortune on a business venture gone wrong. He is debt due to it and he is covering for his drug addict brother. He is a divorced father of one and he spends his days as a "fixer" or "janitor" for a big law firm. His job is basically to clean up messes so they do not become public. The problem is he is an actual lawyer dying to do trial law again but this is his job. He is good at it too, or so we are told. By the time we get to him he is a broken beaten man. A man at a crossroads of his life. He seems to be tired of walking the line of moral ambiguity but we are not quite sure because the movie doesn't start from the beginning. When we get to the beginning of the story we meet Arthur Edens(Tom Wilkinson) who is a brilliant lawyer, but he is a manic depressive and when he doesn't take his medication he does weird things like stripping down in a deposition and losing his mind. Clayton is brought in to fix the situation but as he gets deeper in it he senses something more is going on. See the law firm they both work for represents a giant garden product business and the client's new product might have actually killed thousands of people. I don't want to give too much else away because I think the movie is better when you don't always know what is going on


From the opening moments of the film I was hooked, even though I wasn't sure what was going on. The film opens on a mostly empty business office and we hear a voice over of Wilkinson's character going on an amazing rant. The rant, full of bristling intensity hooks the viewer right away and really sets this film up nicely. Gilroy may be a first time director but he knows what he is doing. Learning from the rawness of the Bourne franchise, he lights this movie on fire with a burning tense atmosphere. Even when the movie slows down it maintains this sense of immediacy. He is not afraid of letting us get to know Clayton. He get inside his life and it makes the pay off that much better, because we are never sure what side of the fence Clayton is on. Gilroy also crafted a very impressive script, full of great back and forth dialogue and equal intensity to the entire crafting of the film. The not exactly linear movement of the movie really worked for me because it gave us a chance to see where Clayton was emotionally before we knew anything else about him. It puts his mental and spiritual sense right on the forefront of the movie. It lets us know that above everything else, this is a movie about a man who is no longer sure about anything. Someone calls him a "miracle-worker" but we never see that and it lends creditability to where the movie goes.


With Clayton, Clooney does something he has never done before as an actor. Gone is the gleam in his eye. Gone is that charming smile and easy charisma. In its place we find eyes dying to sleep or cry. In its place is a smile masking an unbelievable amount of pain, a smile fighting back years of loss- moral, soul, self and family. Clooney has never been this good, ever. At times I forgot I was watching Danny Ocean because he was Michael Clayton. He owns the movie and it would have died in the hands of a lesser actor. Always willing to do what is best for the movie it is no surprise Clooney knocks it out. Tom Wilkinson is also mesmerizing. He could have easily played the entire crazy guy act way over the top but he finds a perfect blend of manic over the top behavior, a child like stare and down to earth moral righteousness. Tilda Swinton is also excellent as a lawyer for the garden product giant. A woman on the verge of making some of the worst decisions of her life, Swinton plays the aches through these incredibly expressive eyes and this almost limp body language. She is never as strong as she pretends to be and Swinton captures all of it.


The camera work is fairly straight forward but that is the way it needed to be here. This a no frills movie that calls for a minimalist approach to film making. Gilroy knows the money shot is not the an actual shot but the money shot is George Clooney and when the final credits start to role and all we see is Clooney, it becomes crystal clear that Gilroy has a tremendous respect for what Clooney can do. This is the kind of legal thriller John Grisham wishes he could have written and the kind of movie every legal thriller wishes it could be. Even though we are never 100% sure as to what exactly is happening with the legal case, we do know we want Michael Clayton to look his moral crossroads in the face and find a way to make the right decision. However, we never really know whether he will or not because along the way he makes great and horrible decisions, which in the end is what makes him human and is what makes us care so much. In shorter terms, GO SEE THIS MOVIE!