Michael Clayton (2007)

Story: When the litigator (Tom Wilkinson) from his firm representing UNorth in a massive civil action suit has a public break down, the firm brings in Michael Clayton (George Clooney) to fix the problem. UNorth's chief council, Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), is less than impressed with Michael, informing his boss at the law firm (Sydney Pollack) and planning to take matters into her own hands.

I bet you're thinking, "Dude, I still don't get what this movie's about. Also, when does that car blow up?" Right away, my friends, as writer-director Tony Gilroy uses JJ Abrams' favourite trope (dropping the viewers into the middle of the story then backing up a few days to find out how we got there) to his peril. We spend far too much time going back over that part of the story, and our only comfort is that we spend slightly less time with the screeching lunatics he meets in the first few minutes.

A few weeks ago, Kim Masters wondered why this movie isn't doing so well in theatres (although, I will note, it appears to have done better since that article was posted). The first point, that it's Clooney, makes some sense. People like Clooney the man but Clooney the actor is another story. The second point, that it's the marketing, makes a lot of sense. I had no idea what this movie was about until I sat down to watch it. The third point could be the subject of a far more interesting article, so let's leave it for now.

Let's debunk the second point by spelling out the plot in a way no commercial is interested in doing. Arthur Edens (that's Wilkinson) is the sole attorney representing UNorth for this law firm, and he knows that UNorth is guilty. Among their other interests, UNorth is responsible for a fertilizer that poisons people. Of course, this is one of the problems with the plot of this movie. We know, almost from the beginning, that UNorth knowingly put on the market a fertilizer that was poisonous. There is no ambiguity on this point nor is the decision to sell it linked to any human. Of the four signatures on the internal document that proves that UNorth knew about the lethal nature of their product in advance, we meet exactly one man, and he has maybe, maybe five minutes of screen time out of the 119 minutes we spend with this story. Of course, that man isn't our eponymous protagonist, so we aren't likely to get any better.

Michael Clayton is our hero, and this is his story. The poisoning of hundreds of farmers is secondary to the slow awakening of his conscience. It's not that that, on its own, doesn't make for an interesting story. It surely does. It's that Michael is so laden down with extraneous subplots that are meant to showcase how ripe for reformation he is that you get bored getting there. Of course he's going to repent. He couldn't get any worse: bad relationship with his kid; bad relationship with his ex (who has, naturally, remarried and had another kid to make sure we understand how well adjusted she is); neglectful of his family, including his dying father; gambling addict; in debt, but no, not to a bank like a normal person, to a loan shark; no significant relationships outside of work; no real relationships at all except with Arthur, a manic-depressive off his meds. Michael's like Harvey Kietel in Bad Lieutenant only self-serious. Even so, Clooney makes Michael's transformation almost entirely* believable, and it's also fun to watch him charm or growl, as the situation merits, on screen.

*There is one scene that strained my credulity so far as to cause me pain, in which he confronts Pollack about the possibility that UNorth is guilty. He's holding the evidence in his damn hand, but he's still asking. Do you think the case would have reached 30 000 billable hours if they were innocent?

Sadly, neither the dullness nor the sheer volume of subplots are this movie's greatest failing. That award is reserved for the movie's latent sexism. There are exactly two female characters of any significance in this movie. First off, we have Karen, chief counsel of UNorth. When we first meet Karen, she's having a sweaty melt down in the bathroom. It never really gets better for our girl. She's shown as nearly pathologically desperate to handle the situation that arises from Arthur's breakdown in order to impress her male mentor and keep her job. Said job calls for difficult and immoral decisions, which the script does not see fight to give Karen the sangfroid to make. Instead, she is constantly on the verge of tears or falling to pieces over things that Gilroy makes abundantly clear Pollack or even Clooney could do without batting a lash. More than once we see her laying out her outfits and putting herself together in the morning, practicing a speech for a meeting or sound bytes for an interview. The only time we see any male character in such a state of disarray is Arthur during his mental collapse. Unlike the rest of the leads, Karen doesn't have a home but a series of hotel rooms. She's the only one who works out, and she does work while on the treadmill. The only female lead is riddled with flaws and given no redeeming characteristics.

She is, naturally, "balanced" out by the virginal Anna (Merritt Wever), a twenty-ish daughter of one of the victim's of UNorth who has never left the farm. The one and only time she does, she brings pastel, floral pyjamas and has a stuffed animal strapped into her suitcase. One's a mess, and the other's infantilized. Thanks, Gilroy.

That said, I still like both Wever and Swinton, who knocks it out of the park every time anyway. It's shame, though. She does sangfroid really well.

Mostly, though, it's just boring. If the leads weren't so good, this movie wouldn't have anything going for it. Oh, and all that good stuff from the preview? From the last act. Good job, marketers! C