At the very first moment when we hear the voice of Tom Wilkonson's character Arthur Edens doing a monologue into an answering machine I was completely drawn into the world of "Michael Clayton" and was not let go till the last long shot in a taxi cab ended."Michael Clayton" grips you with the its flawless screenplay that should get serious Oscar consideration and the actors who play desperate people.
The main desperate character is the name in the title: Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is what is called a "fixer" in a giant law firm, he fixes messes that are left by either the clients or the lawyers themselves so the firm is able to save face. Michael is shown at the beginning as a compulsive gambler who needs to raise 80 thousand dollars to pay off debts to a failing business, he's a single father who seems too busy with work to even take interest in his son. Although Michael is described as a miracle worker with his job he sort of cynically considers himself more of a janitor.
Michael is soon called in to clean up a recent outburst that may cause the firm a major multi-million dollar lawsuit. When their expert litigator Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) has what looks to be a nervous breakdown in a litigating room with camera's rolling the company the firm is defending UNORTH wants this embarrassment taken care of. Michael's job is to take Arthur and get him back on medication and back to performing his duties. Arthur seems to have different feelings however, he claims to have evidence of a cover up then begins to sympathize with one of the victims on the other side of the case, and wants to switch sides to help bring UNORTH down.
This does not sit well with one of the heads of the company Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) who wants to make this situation just go away.
"Michael Clayton" does seem like a set up to a lot of legal thrillers we've seen in the past mostly cooked up by John Grisham, but what makes this film different is how much more intelligent it is. The film doesn't try to make the heroes and villains one dimensional, they are all wounded in a way. We see Michael as a sad case going through his own personal crisis, Arthur who is obviously unbalanced is sometimes hard to believe. Swinton does an excellent job of showing the inner workings of Karen Crowder, she is a very frightened person too and someone who is so obsessed with getting ahead it nearly makes her sick.
In fact all the acting is top notch. Not many movie stars are like George Clooney, he's suffering from Cary Grant syndrome where when we see him we sometimes forget he's a great actor. Unlike some movie stars, Clooney is always willing to take risks and go to where ever his character takes him. In Tom Wilkinson's case he is given many chances here where he could just over act but he doesn't, everything he does is something in tune with the character and it's a brave performance that dominates a lot of the scenes. I think the best scenes are in fact with Clooney and Wilkinson, there seems to be a battle of wills between these two men who obviously have a close friendship but are now representing opposite ends of a legal spectrum, the scenes were just riveting.
The other star of this film is writer/director Tony Gilroy who helped write the screenplay for my favorite action movie of the year "The Bourne Ultimatum". This is however his first directing job and seems to hearken back to the classic seventies era where movies like this were being made all the time, back then Michael Clayton would've been played by Robert Redford, Karen Crowder would've been Faye Dunaway, and Arthur Edens would've been Peter Finch. Gilroy doesn't treat the audience like idiots and his plot though hard to follow in the beginning all comes together flawlessly in the end with a wrap up that seems to go one way but ends another, and a truly inventive final shot.
"Michael Clayton" is definitely one of the smartest films I've seen all year, it doesn't let go for a moment. It's a film about what is being said and the power of the acting and dialogue punctuates the importance of every word.
4 stars out of 4
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