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'Michael Clayton' movie review |
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Written by Chris Vognar, MCT
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Friday, 05 October 2007 |
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MICHAEL CLAYTON
Grade: B
Starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack and Michael O'Keefe. Directed by Tony Gilroy. R (language, violence). 119 min.
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Let us return momentarily to the heyday of '70s film, a hothouse of conspiracy and nefarious plots. The nasty shadow of Vietnam and Watergate flickered on the screen, where someone was always listening in ("The Conversation") or killing off ("The Parallax View") or covering up ("All the President's Men").
"Michael Clayton" wants to be one of those films, and if it doesn't quite get there it's not for lack of ambition or gumption. Its moral universe is as washed out as the dull glow generated by overhead lights in its law offices and conference rooms.
Good men, including George Clooney's title character, a fixer for a powerful New York law firm, have forgotten how to be good. Corporate behemoths, namely the agriculture conglomerate U/North (defended by Michael's firm in a massive class-action suit), think little of dispatching killers to clean up a mess. And we don't mean "killers" in the metaphorical sense. "Michael Clayton" has one of the cleanest, most hauntingly efficient homicides you'll ever see at the movies.
There's even a little echo of "Network," thanks to bravura turns by Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. Wilkinson is Arthur Edens, a manic depressive attorney who goes off his medication in the midst of defending U/North and begins ranting unpopular truths, a la Howard "mad as hell" Beale. This doesn't sit well with U/North's chief counsel, a hyper-driven, joyless shark given frightful life by Swinton. (This character, like Faye Dunaway's Diane Christiansen in "Network," smacks a bit of sexism: beware the corporate woman).
As we glory in the sight of Wilkinson's Arthur wandering through a lit-up Times Square, a ghostly, beatific smile across his lips, Swinton delivers both the steel will and the anxiety of a honcho who can glimpse millions siphoned away by the moral clarity of a madman. The possibility of a whistleblower makes her mad. And like good old Howard, she's not going to take it.
Though "Michael Clayton" has all the makings of a great movie, it settles for earnest goodness. Clooney is in beset "Syriana" mode here, deep eyed and heavy-hearted, and he deftly carries Michael's burden as the fixer realizes his priorities need fixing. But so do the long stretches of "Michael Clayton" that suffer from an excess of exposition without plot movement. The parts fit together, but Michael's family life and financial dilemmas, not to mention the strange red book his son is reading, create cumbersome bumps in the story road. It's not that these elements aren't important, but they need some smoothing and massaging to get in line with the film's more dire implications.
It's the scope of those implications, and the air of menace conjured by writer and director Tony Gilroy, that keep "Michael Clayton" from becoming a "Jerry Maguire as a lawyer" movie. Like those '70s films, "Michael Clayton" suggests, in no uncertain terms, that something nebulously toxic is in the air. Like "In the Valley of Elah," another film in which a self-assured man's man recoils in disbelief as the scales fall from his eyes, "Michael Clayton" is a story about waking up and looking around after years of slumber.
If "Michael Clayton's" particular mix of law and commerce gets a little murky, that murkiness also gives the film a shadowy aura. In this world the truth is out there. But those who stumble upon it run the risk of insanity — followed by the distinct possibility of death.
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