Michael Clayton (2007)
By discarding the bombast and self-importance that normally plague a legal thriller, writer-director Tony Gilroy has, with Michael Clayton, made it hip to hate big ecological law crushing companies again. The film is more polished, but deep down it has the amoral grit of a 1970s thriller directed by Sidney Lumet or Alan J. Pakula. Michael Clayton is an intelligent adult drama that manages to find surprisingly deep reservoirs of vulnerablity in it’s characters. You may, for once, actually give a damn what happens.
George Clooney is Michael Clayton, and he’s the film’s trump card. World weariness looks good on this man. Clooney burrows into himself here, and suppresses the confident Clooneyness that’s served him in the Danny Ocean movies. He’s given up, he knows he’s a shark, or at least swimming with them, and his only real goal is to not feel too much pain or let his family tear themselves apart.
Which is another way of saying that we once again find George Clooney in Syriana mode, only this time he’s backed by a film that bothers to be coherent and doesn’t congratulate itself on its relevance. Yes, this is sexy, movie star world weariness as opposed to true, ugly, pits of despair world weariness, but its effective and elicits our sympathy anyway. We root for Clooney primarily because, and this is the essence of a true star, we wished we looked that good consoling our son, or telling our alcoholic brother to go fuck himself.
Tom Wilkinson is our Peter Finch character here, a legendary attorney who’s mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore. Like Finch, the degree of madness that shouldn’t be reigned in by pills is debatable. Wilkinson has possibly fallen in love with a person he’s supposed to be protecting his Big Ruthless Corporate client from. Worse yet, he may have also been actively building a case against the client. Enter Clooney as a fixer on his end, enter Tilda Swinton as a person who’s just beginning to realize how far she’s capable of going on the other end.
Swinton is the villian, the stand in for the whole Corporation (called U/North) and she’s allowed to be shockingly open to bouts of crippling panic. The Swinton character isn’t a toothy, confident smoothy; she’s just earning her stripes, and her fall into darker territory is subtle and chilling. Watch the first time she orders a hit, listen to the language exchanged between her and a man that remains nameless. Watch her reaction as she finalizes this transaction.
Then watch the murder as actually executed. This is a chilly bit of business, executed with the same white collar efficiency that would characterize the signing of a merger (which Clooney’s office is also facing). Michael Clayton works so well because we see people on both sides dying from the diseased machine of big corruption. The only time the film verges on heavy handedness is in Clayton’s convenient naivete at certain revelations, though even this is acknowledged in a sharp bon mot by his mentor, Sydney Pollack.
The ending looks like formula, and is formula, but it doesn’t let Clayton off the hook. Clayton shows a momentary, idealistic bit of courage, but look where that gets him. Stuck riding in the same alleyways he always rides in, the only momentary escape being a prolonged cab ride to nowhere in particular.
October 17th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Woah, I’ve got some catching up to do.
I liked Clayton too, though I was hoping for just a bit more. The ending was a little too pat for me, and there was just something about Swinton that rubbed me the wrong way. I still can’t figure out if it was her character or her performance. Normally I think she’s fantastic, so I’m willing to give her the benefit of a doubt.
Anyway, a solid adult thriller.
October 18th, 2007 at 6:05 am
The ending is admittedly pat, and the film is never more than pop. But I did think it was really good pop, and that’s hard to come by these days it seems.
October 18th, 2007 at 9:59 am
I think if I went into it expecting really good pop, I’d have been a little more satisfied. Somehow I was expecting more though and it colored my response.
***Spoiler*** Also, as much as the old ‘tape-recorder in the pocket’ trick annoyed me, I really loved the closing credits that are just an extended shot of Clooney in the cab and you begin to think about what a giant shit sandwich he’s made for himself. His career is over and he’s still 45 and broke and it’s all written on his face. Did he cash the check for 80 grand? I forget.
October 19th, 2007 at 5:40 am
The final scene of Clooney riding around does a lot to earn back the good will that the tape recorder scene threatened to squander. I get the sense that that 80 grand won’t be around for him.