MICHAEL CLAYTON
***1/2 out of 4
Rated R
Directed by Tony Gilroy
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE: Best Picture, Best Director-Tony Gilroy, Best Actor-George Clooney, Best Supporting Actor-Tom Wilkinson, Best Supporting Actress-Tilda Swinton, Best Original Screenplay-Tony Gilroy, Best Original Score-James Newton Howard
Do grads fresh out of film school come out of their hallowed halls of learning wanting to make movies like MICHAEL CLAYTON? I always thought of them, pony-tailed and reeking of patchouli and ramen, as people dying to prove how funny and deep they were. Where's the new Welles? Or Hitchcock? Or Kurosawa? And where the hell do legal thrillers come into play?
Because legal thrillers aren't really anyone's idea of a good time. Audiences don't go to see them and critics like me, no matter how tantalizing the credits look on paper, always drag our feet. They're called motion pictures, and legal thrillers tend to trap us in courtrooms, board rooms and offices. And even when they're done to the utmost heights of the genre, like MICHAEL CLAYTON is, the only staying power they tend to have is as dusty examples in, you guessed it, film schools!
I've belly-ached for a couple of paragraphs to say that MICHAEL CLAYTON is more of a "classic" than an actual classic. But as it stands, it's very well-made, snappily written, and finely acted. It's a debut feature that director Tony Gilroy can be proud of, and it's the best tale of corporate malfeasance and legal wrangling since Michael Mann's THE INSIDER.
George Clooney plays Michael Clayton, who's basically the troubleshooter for the firm he works for, fixing whatever unforeseens that need tending to. His lack of a formal title alienates him from his co-workers and his boss (Sydney Pollack). He's trying to open a bar, and ever-increasing debt and a gambling problem distract him from his work and his family.
His job comes crashing in on him when a long time friend and litigator for a pesticide company headquartered in Omaha, Arthur Edens, (Tom Wilkinson) goes batshit insane during a meeting and gets naked and chases the plantiff out into the parking lot. Clayton is called in to patch up all the boo-boos. Turns out that Arthur has evidence that the pesiticide killed four-hundred people and his conscience and skipping his meds finally caught up with him.
On the other side of the fence is Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), a corporate go-getter for the pesticide people who's assigned to handle this and the more and more she has to cover up, the more ruthless she gets.
I gotta tell ya, folks, Wilkinson takes home the acting trophy for this one, playing Edens as a man whose righteous flights of loony fancy have in no way effected his acute legal mind. The screenplay loves this character and Wilkinson loves the script right back, achieving literate psychosis. In one of his early scenes, he somehow dovetails getting a blowie from two strippers with adding up billable hours in his head and equtes them both with being eternally damned. It reads like Bukowski, plays like a Rick Shapiro stand-up act and the result is intriguing, to say the least. Wilkinson won an Oscar in 2002 that now sits on Denzel Washington's mantle for some strange reason. He was nominated again this year, but that will achieve similar results.
Sorry, Tom. You can't beat Anton and his magic bowl-cut.
Also rockin' the house with her LONG-THE-FUCK-OVERDUE Oscar nomination is Tilda Swinton. Her Karen Crowder is a corporate beast from toes to eyebrows. I particularly dug her first scene, where she rehearses her soulless office-speak in front of the mirror. Crowder holds no illusions about what she does or who she is, making her a practical and effective villain for MICHAEL CLAYTON.
And what about this Clooney kid? Yeah, he's good. He's real good. He's just not ready for The Show yet. Truth be told, he gives a measured and quiet performance as Clayton, but watching how good Wilkinson and Swinton are, I kind of got the feeling that I was sitting there watching a good movie while the two GREAT movies were walking out the door.
The tech all-star in this one is DP Robert Elswit, the Paul Thomas Anderson lenser who has also become the go-to guy for George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh's Section Eight productions. The world of MICHAEL CLAYTON is of sterile slate grays, upon which no dirt can live for long. It is the best sort of look for this film.
But every revelation, reconciliation and twist can be seen coming from a mile away. If write-director Tony Gilroy can be credited with anything, it's that he nailed the particulars while doing absolutely nothing with the big picture. And the cut-and-dry John Grisham ending is amlost unforgiveable in this world of ambiguities. The only thing that salavaged the same ending from THE INSIDER was the fact that it was true.
If MICHAEL CLAYTON resembles anything, it's like getting this year's inductees in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to collaborate on a rendition of Yesterday. The people involved can make it enjoyable, even absorbing, in spite of the fact that we all know the song by heart.
Come on, kids, YOU KNOW THE WORDS!
Excellent reivew.
For me the film works well when Clooney and Swinton confront each other at the very end. It's a great cathartic moment.
And Swinton and Wilkinson deserve the awards that is for sure. She shoudl have gotten one for The Deep End back in 2001.
I really liked the movie also. Best picture worthy? Probably not, but it's still really good.