Cast: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollack

Director: Tony Gilroy

Screenplay: Tony Gilroy

Running time: 2 hrs

Genre: Legal Thriller/Drama/


CRITIQUE:


Anyone expecting a chutzpah of high-quality legal thriller in MICHAEL CLAYTON may seem to be consummated, but for those looking for exemplary filmmaking might just find their selves in the pedestrian category – you know, just like crossing a literal pedestrian in the street along with many people, it pushes you to walk fleetingly fast otherwise you’d get run over by the seriously-looking filmic vehicle. So as the film, so fleetingly fast, so no-nonsense, I-don’t-give-a-damn-to-your-intelligence-quotient corporate thriller, and so seriously grounded that you’d start asking why in the butthole everyone’s frowning in this flick.


Of course, if you wouldn’t know the story, you wouldn’t have a clue. George Clooney, in the sharpest of suits as though he literally stepped out an Esquire mag, plays the titular lawyer-cum-fix-it bloke stumbles into a legal mess of case. U North, a chemical company has been sued for poisoning, in result to the death of numerous farmers intoxicated by company’s product, and the first-class lawyer defending the lawsuit Arthur Edens (an arguably excellent performance by Tom Wilkinson, whose voice serves as an eerie voiceover at the beginning) goes screwed up in the brain department. In short, he’s becoming insane and cannot defend the case anymore. On the other side of the battlefront is the company’s smart-aleck wonder, Karen Chowder (a terrific Tilda Swinton), whose evil intentions are surreptitiously and almost untraceably hidden under her sharp suit wardrobe and steely and composed smile.


Looking for storytelling meat, present it is. But for panache, it is not. Anyone noticing the study on Clayton’s background subplot about his broken family, his child that he drives to school, his night gambling larking about, seemed to not have fully established visible threads of significance to the main driving plot. And that snobbish geezer at the beginning, who calls for Clayton to fix his shenanigan, after running over a random guy in the street, seemed to have been used as a plot device that would ensue to Clayton stopping over a barn and have a look at some amok horses. Oh, puhlease. Nevertheless, it’s got its own style, and the performance of Clooney is reliable, often disturbing in his character ethos, but just can’t quite escape the fact that he was playing a character who looked like, well, Clooney himself. It is, meanwhile, Tilda Swinton and her excellent gravitas that mostly steal the whole show away. It’s in her perfectionist self-possession at the beginning, to her unruffled looks, her whip-smart intelligence, and until her tremulous desperation at the end, falling to her knees that, quite ironically, made her rise and grab that Best Supporting Actress in the recently fêted Oscars.


THE FINAL WORD:


An overrated legal thriller in the vein of Grisham and a touch of Pollack himself, this Tony Gilroy debut effort is a satisfactory, and convoluted, romp into the messy corporate world of suing and defending. Thankfully enough, no court scenes for added heaviness, but certainly achieves the glimpse into the humans between the blackest of suits, making Tilda Swinton shines the better rather than Clooney’s titular character.


VERDICT: B