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2007 THE NOMINEES |
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"MICHAEL CLAYTON"  |
Quiet, unobtrusive thriller
gets a real grip on you
of TheColumnists.com
If ever there was a thinking man's thriller, "Michael Clayton" is it. Its title character is a toubled lawyer working as a "fixer" for a major law firm that's involved in a multi-million dollar class action suit. His firm is counting on him to tie up the necessary deals and witnesses to save their corporate client millions.
But Michael (George Clooney) is not a happy camper at the huge New York law firm where he's always on call to do everybody's dirty work. His marriage has dissolved, he's in debt and his outside business activities are all failures. Yet the worst is yet to come.
Michael is asked to take charge of an old friend, a senior lawyer (Tom Wilkinson) whose erratic behavior may be putting the huge class action case in jeopardy. Michael quickly discovers his old friend is having a mental breakdown. He also learns that the charges in the class action suit may mean his law firm is helping cover up a great deal of corporate corruption. He has what lawyers are never supposed to have--an ethical crisis.
Clooney's performance is subtle and yet quite insightful. He conveys the anguish of a man who realizes his whole career may have been in service of corrupt corporations and individuals. When he begins to realize his firm and its client may stop at nothing--including murder--to protect their secrets, his ethical crisis becomes a life-threatening event.
This is an engrossing, superbly made film that's loaded with extraordinary performances, epsecially those of Clooney and Tilda Swinton, who plays the senior lawyer who's trying to bring him back in line. Tony Gilroy's direction is without flaw.
This is the kind of great movie that's rare in any year. It reminds me most in mood and spirit of "The Verdict," Sidney Lumet's great 1982 legal drama in which Paul Newman played another ethically challenged courtroom lawyer and gave perhaps his finest screen performance.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The illustration is courtesy of Warner Bros. This column first posted Feb. 18, 1976.
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