While I'm not nearly as concerned with actors using movies to spread propaganda (either liberal or conservative) as Eric is, I don't exactly look forward to movies that do so. This is why I avoided Michael Clayton for so long. This being a George Clooney film I made a snap judgment based on the previews that this wasn't the movie for me. It looked like a chance for him to bash big business while making himself look good. What I couldn't tell about this movie until I finally watched it is that it is a really good movie and that my first impression was almost entirely wrong.
If I had to sum this movie up with one word, it would be tense. From start to finish there is a sense of palpable tension, which goes to show that you don't need action or violence to create tension in a movie, since apart from the car explosion in the first ten minutes of the movie, there is almost no violence at all and all of the action is spoken and implied.
Clooney stars as Michael Clayton, a lawyer for a big New York law firm, whose job is to act as a sort of legal janitor. He doesn't appear in court, he just works behind the scenes to make problems go away. The movie opens with him traveling upstate to deal with a hit and run incident, but while driving back, his car is blown up, but after he has exited it. The story then flashes back four days to when Arthur (Wilkinson), another lawyer at the firm, has had a nervous breakdown during a deposition by a witness in a case against u-North, a large chemical company that Arthur is defending. Michael is sent to help clean up the mess this has caused.
Arthur, who is normally on mood stabilizers, has stopped taking his medication and suddenly grown a conscience. After coming across some damning evidence against u-North, he's decided to change sides in the law suit. Naturally enough, both u-North and the law firm don't want this to happen since it will cost both of them enormous sums of money. They want Michael to rein him in before more drastic measures are necessary.
The best thing about this movie is the way Michael is portrayed as morally ambiguous. He's not a saintly do-gooder, he's got a gambling problem, he's in debt to the mob, and he's a neglectful, absentee father. It is perhaps George Clooney's finest acting performance to date.
In fact, the cast is universally terrific. Wilkinson is fantastic as always as the confused lawyer of questionable mental stability. Sydney Pollack does a great job as Michael's boss. He's always been recognized as a great director, but he really is a decent actor as well, with presence. And Tilda Swinton gives an award-worthy turn as the representative of u-North. I wouldn't be disappointed if they were all nominated for awards for this movie.
Yes this movie does do a little, big business is bad, but so long as propaganda is wrapped in a really good and entertaining movie as this one is, I don't mind it so much. And this movie really is a tense and well-acted movie. One of the year's ten best, no doubt.
