Monday, May 05, 2008

Michael Clayton (2007)



Michael Clayton is another one of those movies that's disguised as another kind of movie. It's a character piece pretending to be a thriller.

As a thriller, it's pretty average. George Clooney plays a lawyer who doesn't take cases, but instead cleans up messes for the prestigious firm he works for. Your rich client hit a jogger and drove away from the scene of the accident? Call Michael Clayton. The lead council on your multi-billion dollar law suit lost his mind and took off all his clothes during a deposition? Call Michael Clayton.

Unfortunately, Michael is good buddies with said Crazy Lead Council (Tom Wilkinson) and halfway believes his claims that a) the firm is backing the wrong client and b) he has the documents to prove it. I won't spoil the plot, but needless to say Michael gets pulled deeper into the intrigue and before long his life is at risk. The way he gets in and out of the situation is by-the-numbers thriller storytelling, but the movie's strength is in its portrayal of the main characters: Michael, Arthur (Wilkinson's character), and the corporate lawyer representing their client (Tilda Swinton).

An average thriller would give us a quick character sketch of the main character - just enough so we could invest in him a little - and that would be it. Arthur would just be a plot element - a way to get Michael involved in the story - and Karen Crowder (Swinton's character) would just be the heartless villain. But Michael Clayton spends a lot more time on all three.

Michael's not just dissatisfied with his job; he hates it. He's been trying to get out for a while, even trying to go into the restaurant business with his younger brother, an alcoholic deadbeat who's driven the restaurant deep into debt with the mob and left Michael to pay off all by his lonesome. Michael's divorced and has a young son whom he doesn't listen to enough. As my wife observed, Michael the Fixer has a severely broken personal life that he can't mend. Ooh, the irony.

Okay, that last sentence was snotty, but that's the way I feel about it. Even though the film goes deeper into characterization than a lot of thrillers, there's still not much new even to that part. We're told that Michael's this brilliant fixer, but we never see it. He muddles Arthur's case by being too close to Arthur and the only other case he spends any time on is the hit-and-run one I mentioned before. And he pretty much washes his hands of that one. There's a brief montage showing him taking and redirecting a lot of phone calls in the course of a typical business day, but it's not enough to convince me that Michael's as awesome at his job as everyone says he is.

See, it's not the writing that brings these characters to life. We get that Arthur's beating himself up for helping a chemical company escape paying for all the people it gave cancer to, but there's not much more to him than that. And Karen is pretty much a standard corporate bad guy willing to do whatever it takes to avoid paying the people whose lives her company has destroyed.

What saves the movie from being run-of-the-mill is the acting. Clooney plays Michael not as damaged, but just completely torn up inside. You can see the job eating away at him without his having to ever say a word about it. It does come up in conversation, but it's a natural part of the dialogue, not an expository, we-have-to-tell-the-audience-how-Michael-feels kind of thing. We know how Michael feels just by watching him.

Wilkinson's Arthur is heart-breaking in his remorse and so believable in his obsession in trying to correct his past mistakes.

I said that Karen is "pretty much" a standard villain, but there is a cool twist to her that Swinton does amazing things with. Karen is new in her role and is written as a woman who's desperately trying to prove that she's up to the task of defending this case. Swinton plays her as always in danger of collapsing under the pressure. She's tough and polished in public or when she spars with Michael, but in private she quivers and sweats and stammers her way through practice speeches. We never like her, but we feel sorry for her and I don't remember ever feeling that way about a bad guy before.

I should also mention Sydney Pollack because I love him and he does his usually great acting job as the head of Michael's firm. He's not a pleasant character, but he obviously cares about Michael and that makes him likeable. Come to think of it, that's another point for the writing, so I don't want to suggest that that part is no good at all. It certainly has its moments, but the real treat of the movie is watching the performances. All three of the main actors deserved the Oscar nominations they got, even if the movie as a whole didn't.

Three out of five country-road car chases.

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails