Michael Clayton

Michael Clayton is a top-notch legal thriller from the mind of writer/director Tony Gilroy (he of the Bourne franchise fame). I sat down in my theater seat expecting a solid movie, but what I got was one of the best films I've seen this year.

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is the protagonist of the title. He is a man down on his luck and searching for a way to keep his head above water after a bar business never gets off the ground. He is a reforming gambler. He is also the go-to "janitor" of one of the biggest law firms.

A janitor is a lawyer who cleans up other lawyers' and clients' messes. He does not go to trial. His job is to make sure everything is not a disaster by the time the transgressions go to trial or avoiding trial altogether.

His current dilemma in the movie is fixing the ruins after one of his colleagues and friends strips naked at a deposition in a three billion dollar lawsuit against a major farming corporation.

It seems that Clayton's friend, played with manic fear, energy, and sparkle in his eyes by former Oscar nominee Tom Wilkinson, went off his medication around the time he had a mental breakdown/epiphany that threatens to destroy the case. Clayton is sent in to do damage control.

The threat is looming over chief council for the corporation played with nervous energy by Tilda Swinton. As she loses hold over the case, she struggles to contain the damage in more questionable ways than Clayton is pursuing.

It seems everybody is unhinging. As Clayton learns more and more about the case, he watches more of his professional and personal life unravel around him. The real mystery of this thriller is not who is going to get hurt or who is at fault for inflicting the damage, but rather what kind of man Michael Clayton is. He becomes faces with a crisis of conscience, which is especially difficult for someone whose conscience has been pushed into the background for so long.

Unlike the John Grisham thrillers that every critic seems to compare Michael Clayton to, Michael Clayton does not use one shred of heavy-handedness or exploitation of its genre conventions. Instead, the film boils slowly at a deliberate pace. Still, I was amazed very early on how tight the film's plot was. There is not an ounce of fat on it.

That is because the film's exposition and characters develop slowly at a natural rate of revelation. Nothing is rushed or forced. Every little detail begins to matter. Not in the way a mystery unravels, but in a way that the details tie together motives, morality, and world of the characters.

Clooney and Wilkinson deliver Oscar-caliber performances in Michael Clayton. Their scenes together burst with tense verbal fireworks. Gilroy and the actors are aware of the necessity of good characters.

Clooney especially gets to display some of the intensity he showed in his Oscar-winning role in Syriana two years ago. He is at his best handling heavy dialogue with either intensity or cool levity. The former is the case here. He does not disappoint.

Eventually, the film culminates in a showdown too simple and familiar to satisfy my growing love for the film. However, it follows suit with the importance of details. Everything before it leads to the finale. Still, the script, which had been so effortlessly smart and fresh throughout, showed a bit of strained effort at the conclusion.

It is still a tad early to be making top ten lists for 2007, but I would not be surprised if Michael Clayton makes its way onto mine.

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