Michael Clayton Review
by Justin M (lifefeed AT gmail DOT com)February 5th, 2008
Michael Clayton
review by Justin McGuire
rating: 4/5
"Michael Clayton" is a movie of three lawyers who lack any connections to the world outside their jobs, and in four days, each are forced to make the familiar choice of wealth or soul.
Arthur Eden, played by Tom Wilkinson, opens the movie with a monologue on his sudden awakening to the essential sum of his life, which in his reckoning is very little. He spends the rest of the movie looking to save his soul from bankruptcy, and upheaving the lives of those around him in the process. He is ultimately seeking forgiveness for his years spent defending uNorth in court, an agribusiness with a poisoned product. It's not an accident that his name is Eden.
Karen Crowder, played by Tilda Swinton, was recently appointed to the 80-hour week job of chief counsel for uNorth, when her predecessor left for the greener pastures of a 4-hour week job on the board of directors. Her predecessor also left her with a messy, billion-dollar lawsuit that was about to fall apart from his own mistake.
We first meet Crowder in a press interview on her new position. When asked if she's prepared for responsibilities of the job, she replies with all the conviction of someone who absolutely isn't. We later see this when she makes two soul-destroying decisions on how to have her problems solved.
Then there is Michael Clayton, played to a tee by George Clooney. Clayton describes himself as a janitor, a guy who cleans up other people's messy problems. It's a job without glamour, without an career track, and without any good purpose. We find him working in a beautifully appointed office, but when the camera pulls back to outside his window, where we see that he's just a another corner office in just another dingy skyscraper. He's a slump-shouldered cog, and he's very good at it.
The movie follows a very traditional hero-story. Michael Clayton is our reluctant, working man hero. He has the divorce and the ignored child that all lawyers have, and I imagine he owns nothing of substance beyond seven identical suits; even his car is leased. He is a hero because when it is thrust upon him, he chooses to step up.
Tony Gilroy wrote and directed, having previously written such films as "The Devil's Advocate" and "Armageddon." Gilroy writes films for scenery chewing, and I have to give credit to Clooney for not going down that route, instead giving us a solidly subdued performance. The chewing on the scenery performance went to Wilkinson, who had a role that necessitated it.
The movie has a couple weak spots, and the first is Clayton's boss, Marty Bach, played Sydney Pollack. Bach has an inordinate amount of screen time for a role that contributes almost nothing to the story; I imagine that this occurred just to give Pollack more screen time. Regardless of his talents, Pollack could have been eliminated from the film entirely with no loss of story fidelity. There is also dialog that is written to be quoted and repeated across hundreds of reviews. When a cop angrily tells Michael, "You got all these cops thinking you're a lawyer. Then you got all these lawyers thinking you're some kind of cop. You know exactly what you are," it comes across as begging for pithiness. A normal cop would express that sentiment with a simple four letter expletive, but that wouldn't be as clever as Gilroy demands of his script.
The ending is a perfect mirror to the rest of the movie, when we see Clayton facing the same decision Crowder made earlier: weighing his soul against wealth and a career. With a last scene reminiscent of The Graduate, we are never positive that he believes he made the right choice.
Michael Clayton a well put-together film with few flaws through its morally unambiguous storytelling.
4/5 stars.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
