Failing fixer Clooney is great but has to fight for center stage next to supporting actress Tilda Swinton as the ethically maimed corporate attorney. Add Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollock and a dynamite screenplay and we have the thriller of year.
Having scored big as the screenwriter for all three Bourne Identity box office bonanzas, Tony Gilroy saw two opportunities instead of just one. The first opportunity was to break another top-notch screenplay on a viewing audience hungry for mystery thrillers. The second opportunity was to break into directing. In unleashing his new hit Michael Clayton he made good on both. The result is a first rate thriller in which newbie director Gilroy is graced with top-notch talent.
George Clooney is an actor you either love or hate. The majority of film-goers love him and they will not be disappointed in his work in this film. After “Syriana,” “Good Night Good Luck,” “O Brother, Where Art Thou” and a dozen other box-office successes Clooney is solidly cemented into the top of the heap of American popular cinema. Plus he shares with new-comer director Gilroy the experience of breaking into the wheelhouse in film making and having more control of the final product, for better or for worse.
Like his directorial debut “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” and his latter day war movie “Three Kings,” Clooney’s Michael Clayton is an operator with flaws. It is his sophistication and control that allows the right screenplay and director to make those flaws so outstanding in their depth and breadth. His characters can perform the most unbelievable feats of derring-do and then be finally befuddled by the smallest weakness. Doesn’t this just sum it up?
As Clayton, Clooney is that most-fabled of American corporate personalities, the “fixer.” He is the perpetual non-commissioned officer, the leader who can’t stand to wear the uniform. He is a talented professional who spends his life trying to be something else. He is self defeating, but there is style in his defeat, and he retreats to fight another day.
Alpha-female agribusiness lawyer Karen Crowder is Michael Clayton’s polar opposite. Played to the hilt by Tilda Swinton (“Chronicles of Narnia,” “Deep End”) she lives a life of quiet desperation. Although always winning, she never does it with style. In fact she is a walking steady-state nervous breakdown. A high-flying robot, a black hole of charisma. Not only does she have none, but she sucks in the style of others like a dwarf star vacuums the universe. Unlike Clayton, Crowder is quite aware of her limitations. She is the poster child for the modern corporate executive whose life and activities are guided mostly by fear. She is guilt-ridden over how much she is paid and she is guilt-ridden over what she must do.
This is an outstanding performance by Swinton, probably better than Clooney’s. But she has an advantage because her character is so much more dysfunctional.
Oscar nominated Tom Wilkinson (“In the Bedroom”) uncorks another fine performance as the top-notch trial lawyer representing Karen Crowder’s firm who finally decides he has had enough. Or, rather, he decides to go off his meds and make a statement. Like Swinton’s character, he is pushed past the limit of rationality. But he breaks and runs (literally) naked through the streets denouncing his job, the world and all the people in it. Great acting with help from a great screenplay.
Last but not least is Oscar holding director Sydney Pollack (“Out of Africa”) who had to make a tough decision to break free of his considerable producing load to take the part of Marty Bach, Michael Clayton’s boss and law firm king-pin. Bach sees his world crumbling around him and doesn’t quite know what to make of it, except that things are getting bad very fast. It is just no fun to make a million bucks a year and have a view office on 6th Avenue any more. Pollack was apparently so impressed with Gilroy’s screenplay (which Gilroy had kept for himself to direct) that he committed to take the part. No one should miss this rare opportunity to see Pollack in the saddle.
One of the best mystery thrillers of the year. It will be tough to match the combined skills of the cast and crew on this one.
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