"Michael Clayton"

Here's my full-length review of the Golden Globe-nominated "Michael Clayton" from 11/19/07 issue of The American Conservative:

Last year, the NBC Nightly News edited a segment to make it appear that I was debating George Clooney over whether moviegoers were interested in his social conscience. As an admittedly biased observer of the dispute, I'd say that Clooney's roguish charm absolutely crushed my tiresome logic.

Now, Clooney's anti-corporate thriller "Michael Clayton" is one of the best-reviewed films of the year, with critics ecstatically comparing it to their favorite anti-Establishment films of the 1970s. And, indeed, it is competently made. Yet, it has generated little excitement at the box office [$39 million after 12 weeks].

"Michael Clayton" illustrates how dull even natural stars like Clooney and intelligent filmmakers like Tony Gilroy (moving up to direct after writing the "Bourne" trilogy) can be when they set out to make "serious" (i.e., self-important) and "political" (leftist) movies. "Michael Clayton" is a domestic "Syriana," the morose 2005 film about an evil oil company that won Clooney an Academy Award for growing a beard and putting on 30 pounds. (Hey, I did that years before George even thought of it.)

In "Michael Clayton," Clooney plays a Queens-born lawyer with a Fordham degree working at a top Manhattan corporate law firm otherwise staffed by WASP and Jewish Ivy Leaguers. They won't make him a partner because he's outclassed intellectually, but when high finance turns tabloid, only he, a former prosecutor with a brother in the NYPD, can tap the municipal "favor bank." If a CEO client hits a jogger with his Jaguar and runs off, Clooney / Clayton is brought in as the fixer.

The screenplay, though, fails to exploit the intriguing ethnic angles. Rather, it churns out the same old plot about a murderous multinational rubbing out whoever gets in its carcinogenic way.

Tilda Swinton, so aristocratic and androgynous that she makes Cate Blanchett look like Angelina Jolie, plays the corporate counsel for UNorth, which peddles its cancer-causing herbicide in 62 countries. She pays Clooney's law firm tens of millions to fight weed-killer lawsuits, but then their lead defense attorney (Tom Wilkinson of "In the Bedroom") goes all Howard Beale of "Network," ranting about how working for UNorth has put blood on his hands while stripping naked during a deposition.

This sounds entertaining, but isn't, because auteur Gilroy ignores even the ripest targets for satire, such as the plaintiffs' contingency fee attorneys, always a colorful subspecies (Homo avaricious vulgaris). Instead, he maintains a steady tone of doleful indignation.

Our common law doesn't work well with cases in which blame can only be assigned statistically. Say the defendant's herbicide raises the chance of cancer by 50 percent. So, one out of three customers who get cancer are victims of the company, while two out of three aren't; but science can't tell which is which. The contingency fee attorneys bring suits from everybody who might have been harmed, while the defense tries to insinuate to the jury that the plaintiff deserved to get cancer. It's an ugly but fascinating slice of modern Americana, but not one you'll hear anything about from the one-sided "Michael Clayton."

Clooney's fixer has to get the litigator back on his manic-depression medicines so the firm can stiff some more widows and orphans for UNorth. This plunges him into a dark night of the soul, which Clooney portrays by moping around sullenly for two hours. Can somebody please tell George that he's not an actor -- he's a movie star? If I want to see somebody looking tired, ineffectual, and beaten down by life, well, I've got a mirror.

Then, Swinton calls in a Blackwater-like executive outcomes firm to murder Wilkinson before the renegade defense attorney spills UNorth's secrets. Next, she has a bomb placed in Clooney's car.

Swinton can play over-the-top villains such as the White Witch in "Narnia" and an Archangel Gabriel in league with his former colleague Lucifer in "Constantine." Here, though, she realistically embodies a common type, the lady lawyer whose biological clock is barely ticking. She's fine at it, but the authenticity of her performance combined with the absurdity of Gilroy's plot wrecks the movie because corporate yuppettes don't kill people.

Only at the very end does Clooney finally turn on the charisma, and that's just to point out the stupidity of the storyline. He explains to Tilda Swinton that he's having her arrested because, "I'm not the guy you kill. I'm the guy you buy off!" Good point, George, but it's a little late to be bringing it up…

Rated R for language.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer