This is just a really terrific flick all around. I was shying away from it at first, because it looked like one of those handwringers about how a Once Noble Lawyer Rediscovers his Sense of Purpose in Pursuit of Evil Corporate Miscreants. And there is that, to be sure, but the story muddies thing up in really interesting ways, and plays against the expected tropes very nicely.

You see? You truly Never Know.

The writing's very sharp, and except for a foggy plot point toward the end the story hangs together pretty convincingly. Clooney is perfectly cast, this is one of the best things I've ever seen him do. A very smart Matt Damon-like performance, in that he plays neatly with his persona. Here his smooth operator is a guy who uses his charm as a buffer against the realization that his life sucks, basically. And the charm's wearing thin.

A movie star performance in the best sense of the term, and one of those rare times where a straight up Oscar gambit looks to work -- if Clooney doesn't get a nomination this time out he was robbed, truly. The best kind of mainstream Hollywood movie, the kind of thing you're always hoping to find, but too rarely do. Check it out.

doug

Not much to add--I caught a matinee of this today and am pretty much in agreement with Doug on this. This is up there on my best of '07 list. Clooney just oozes weariness like I've rarely seen on the screen before. It's definitely Oscar-caliber work, but Tom Wilkinson is even better. If he doesn't get a Supporting Actor nomination, there is no justice. Lots of great body language acting in this, especially the looks on Wilkinson's face in that Times Square sequence. Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, and Merritt Wever are also quite effective in their roles. This is one of 2007's best.

Agreed all over the place. What a wonderful film! Tony Gilroy takes what could be your usual Hollywood John Grishman conspiracy-thriller furniture polish... and invests every element with such intelligence and freshness. He keeps things about the character, about all the regrets and choices swirling around him, instead of getting on a soapbox for endless stretches of finger-wagging at corporations. It's like a gripping early 70s thriller fell through a wormhole to surprise us now. Great performances all around, even the bit players.

A mature movie for grown-up thinking people! That's also suspenseful and entertaining as all hell! What a concept! Go, go, go!


On a mildly spoilerish side note about the ending...

(MILDLY SPOILERISH)

So many of these types of films, even the ones by talented filmmakers, can never end without tying up all the loose plot ends (usually in a CNN special bulletin seen on a TV in a bar) and making sure we know that everyone lived happily ever after or rotted in jail forever. The Firm is a big sinner in this department. Michael Clayton ends when it ends, without extra scenes that address the effect the protagonist's actions have on future, family, finances, and legal trouble. And yet, Gilroy finds a very intelligent and moving way (which I won't divulge) to have the audience contemplate all of these things without having the answers spoon-fed to us. Bravo on that shot!

(MILD SPOILERS END)

SPOILER ALERT


This is the kind of movie my parents would switch to on a Thursday night when they've already seen CSI. They'd find CLAYTON about a half-hour in, piece together what's come before based on the 50 other hackneyed legal thrillers they've caught on the tube, and then guess the rest of Act II and the bulk of Act III. At which point my mother would fall asleep and my father would stay awake to see Tom Wilkinson buy the farm.

Wow, you should review EVERY movie in terms of its potential effect on yer folks! It can be your big gimmick! ;)

Don't you have about fifteen other threads to snark in before Tuesday, Rydell? To make your quota for the week?

Get on it, man. ;)

It's my big gimmick!!

I thought this terrific, too, easily the best of the current crop of pictures (along with Zodiac) that go for a kind of 70s style. Worth a look.

Having not yet seen THERE WILL BE BLOOD, I can't comment on the quality of Daniel Day Lewis' work , but after dipping in and out of the awards last night, I would like to state that, regardless of his loss, MICHAEL CLAYTON is, to date, George Clooney's best acting gig.

One question about the film itself: (Possible Spoilers)

Did anyone feel that the placement of an explosion early in the film, (before retreating four days to show how the narrative's conflict developed) worked to the detriment of the suspense level of the film in the third act?

Yeah, probably, although in return I think the mystery level increases -- you wonder how certain people got themselves into their predictaments.

At least I did. In fact, sitting here thinking about it, I realize I don't consider MICHAEL CLAYTON a thriller at all, really, more a mystery of sorts. How people got that way, what people really are like, how people adjust to situations -- the pleasure of the movie is that it embeds all of these questions in a perfectly serviceable genre piece -- I have a weakness for that kind of stuff and I think it works surpassingly well here. The questions help the crime story and the crime story help the questions. That's how it should work.

My only problem with the movie is a straightforward structural plot point. I'll try to be vague about it, because one of the great pleasures of MICHAEL CLAYTON is it's willingness to be surprising, to take you in unexpected directions.

In order for the climax to work, certain people have to assume something occurred which actually didn't. I'm not sure why these people would assume such a thing, especially given what we know about them previously.

I'm guessing the answer to this is actually lying on the cutting room floor -- it has the feel of something unwisely edited out. Still, it jars a little.

doug

I was... oh wait.


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Ok, now as I was about to say:
I was really enjoying this movie until they killed off the only interesting character and left us with the generic "badboy lawyer gets a conscience and outsmarts the evil, polluting corportation" thriller/drama fare. Then it couldn't end fast enough.

SPOILERS, I guess










I liked MICHAEL CLAYTON quite a bit, though I have to wonder how much better it would have done at the box office with a better title. Clooney gives a wonderful movie-star performance, Wilkinson is fantastic, Swinton is fine, though I don't see an Academy Award in her performance. I have to say that, considering Gilroy's screenplay earned an Oscar nod, it's marred by too many ugly holes, and the conspiracy seems needlessly convoluted. And, yes, considering we know after the first ten minutes that Clooney survives a car explosion, Gilroy's attempt at building suspense in the third act is just plain silly. I'd wonder whether the director ever read the first part of the script if I didn't know that he wrote it.

Does Sydney Pollack ever age?

I was talking with someone at work about MICHAEL CLAYTON earlier this week, and that very question came up. The guy's 73 years old! He could easily pass for 60, maybe even a couple years younger. If he's had work done, it's not apparent...certainly not in a Kenny Rogers sort-of way.

I was watching THE YAKUZA today, and there's a vintage featurette with footage of Sydney Pollack in 1974. His hair isn't gray, but otherwise ...

The Variety obituary reporting on the sad passing of Anthony Minghella makes reference to Sydney Pollack (Minghella's partner at Mirage Enterprises) being "gravely ill". There have been rumors about this lately, but this is the first time I've seen such news in print.

Oh boy. He's somebody I don't want going anywhere - simply and selfishly because I enjoy watching him on screen so much.

I never thought the third act was about suspense but about reconstructing the moves that led to what we saw in the first act. I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes business... Clooney's tsoris, Swinton's sweating and Wilkinson's mad plotting. I think MICHAEL CLAYTON could easily be mistaken for a thriller but it's really an un-thriller, showing you the fragile humanity behind the machinations of wrongdoing.

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Maybe, but I think it plays like a thriller, whether it's intended to or not. Why else would we care about the assassins chasing Clooney all over those back roads? The only reason to have those scenes in the movie is for suspense purposes, as far as I can see. I mean, boom, car explodes, okay, that's fine--and it works quite well at the beginning of the movie. But after it has already happened, well, who cares how?

I think there was something blackly comic about that scene. Those killers were so professional and precise and here they were blowing it. Just not literally!

Off-topic, but did anyone notice that the middle-aged actor playing Mr. Verne, the older of the two contract killers, is Robert Prescott? Prescott has spent the last two decades in episodic television and the occasional commercial, but at the beginning of his career, he memorably essayed bumbling foils in Bachelor Party (as Cole Whittier) and Real Genius (as Kent Torokvei). Ostensibly, Prescott was simply the victim of the jokes of wiseacres Tom Hanks and Val Kilmer, but he managed to hold his own, particularly in the latter film.