I went and saw the newest George Clooney movie last
week. I was semi-skeptical. The plot was presents a
depressed, divorced lawyer whose job it is to fix
problems that the firm’s clients have. It’s a
demanding job and it’s a thankless one too. After all
who’s going to be overly grateful to you when they’re
scared for their life? Scared of ending up in jail?
Scared of loosing everything they’ve worked for and
built in their life?
But the movie is good and Clooney does present a
believable character and it’s a strong performance on
his part. It didn’t take long for me to forget about
his Doug Ross character from ER and see him as the
lawyer/fixer here in this movie.
The movie starts with Clooney gambling in a poker
game, it moves quickly to him working to take care of
a client’s problem-a rather rich man who lives out on
some huge estate on Long Island apparently has hit a a
pedestrian/runner in the late evening. Clooney is
trying to convince the client that the best thing is
for him to let a criminal defense lawyer come now and
represent him when he turns himself in to the police.
The movie moves quickly as Clooney takes a short break
in the country-stopping on the side of the road-after
he’s talked with this client and he’s seen walking up
to some horses and his car then explodes. I’m sitting
there wondering if it’s because of some gambling
debts, but the movie is more complicated than that,
and it has a subplot or two included. The movie
doesn’t end the way I was expecting-sort of a
disappointment, but it is a Hollywood movie! The
ending does go back to the beginning of the movie so
that we see the entire context of what was going on
and who’s doing what to whom. This I enjoy and also
found very helpful in this movie.
Tom Wilkinson plays a very believable role as a burned
out, bi-polar attorney who’s fed up with the case he’s
been working on for six years and is actually working
to thwart his own efforts in the case by helping the
plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit. The subplot with
the large corporation’s legal chief counsel going
outside the law to try and stop the company’s loosing
millions of dollars is shocking and scary. What she is
willing to do to protect herself and the company made
me wonder whether anything like this could be
happening in our country today.
Michael Clayton (2007)
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0465538/
Trailers - Michael Clayton
http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/michaelclayton/
Michael Clayton Official Site
http://michaelclayton.warnerbros.com/
Clooney Studio | George Clooney
http://www.clooneystudio.com/michaelclayton.html
Monday, October 29, 2007
