Michael Clayton – Review
George Clooney Is Captivating in Tony Gilroy’s Directing Debut
Complex characters and great ensemble performances from Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Tilda Swinton earn well-deserved Oscar nominations.
Michael Clayton, the title character in Tony Gilroy’s riveting drama, is a “fixer,” a “bagman,” an indispensable problem-solver who walks a shadowy no-man’s land between contracts, judgments, settlements and plea bargains for a major New York law firm.
The film opens to a voice-over of Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) going quietly crazy after having sold his soul to the corporate world for many a year. As he will later explain to Michael (George Clooney), Arthur has devoted six years—12 percent of his life—to defending agri-business giant U-North against a major class-action law suit accusing the company of using chemicals which led to a number of deaths in a farming community.
When Arthur, the “chief architect” for U-North’s defense, has a melt-down and strips his clothes off in the middle of a deposition, Michael, who has known Arthur for years, is sent to contain the problem.
The Plot: Internal vs. External Demons
Arthur, straddling a fine line between mental imbalance and moral outrage, appeals to Michael’s sense of right. Michael tells him he needs to be on medication. Arthur says he’s seeing more clearly now than ever that he has been on the wrong side. “You’re a manic depressive,” says Michael. “I am Shiva, the god of death,” replies Arthur.
But even as Michael is sucked into Arthur’s dilemma, he is beset by problems of his own. A reformed gambler with no equity in the law firm, he also takes on his drug-addict brother’s massive debt to loan sharks. He walks his own tightrope between his legal career, inner demons and personal loyalties. Michael’s outer battle is with corporate malevolence, as personified by U-North. His inner battle is defining who he is.
Early in the movie, when Michael is sent to clean up the mess after one of the firm’s clients has a hit-and-run accident, Michael suggests he get a good criminal attorney. The client rants that the firm said they were sending a miracle worker to make the problem go away. In a blinding moment of introspection, Michael says, “I’m not a miracle worker, I’m a janitor.”
Excellent Acting and Directing Develop Complex Characters
Michael Clayton is an excellent bit of cinema. Clooney’s performance is both powerful and subtle, as is Wilkinson’s, both worthy of their respective Oscar nominations. Tilda Swinton, as U-North’s general counsel, Karen Crowder, provides a complex portrait of a woman in the process of selling the last vestiges of her soul. And Sydney Pollack is spot on as the morally neutral head of Michael’s firm.
As Tony Gilroy said in the Los Angeles Times’ “The Envelope,” “Everybody’s in conflict with themselves, everybody’s unsure of what they should do.” And that is precisely what makes the film so rich.
While the opening scenes seem to do more to disorient than to ground us in the story—and thus come off as artificially constructed tension builders—the rest of film plays out in a well-constructed mouse trap of psychological drama.
Gilroy, who also wrote the script (as he did with the Bourne trilogy), deserves serious kudos in his directing debut, as does Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood; Good Night, and Good Luck), who underscores Gilroy’s themes with his lushly bleak, hyper-real cinematography. The final, lengthy taxi scene – with no dialogue whatsoever – is one of the best bits of filmmaking to be found anywhere.
- Grade: A+
- Rating: R
- Running time: 119 minutes
