Objection Sustained! Clooney Clomps Through Colorless Corporate-Law Flick
He’s suave, sure—but utterly wasted in this chunk of Hollywood hokum.
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MICHAEL CLAYTON
Running Time 119 minutes
Written by Tony Gilroy
Directed by Tony Gilroy
Starring George Clooney, Tilda Swinton
I’ve been spending so much time at film festivals hither and yon that it’s time to get back to the real world. Not that there’s anything real about George Clooney’s new vehicle Michael Clayton, but at least it’s slick, superficial Hollywood hokum with minor but passable wentertainment value that doesn’t require subtitles. (It’s also so confoundingly incomprehensible that a homeowner’s manual would be a great help.) So proceed at your own risk, and because it’s George Clooney, you probably will.
Set in the boring world of New York’s corporate law firms, Michael Clayton marks the feature-film directorial debut of Tony Gilroy, who wrote the confusing but popular Bourne Supremacy/Identity/Ultimatum spy-flick trilogy. He directs the way he writes: with a high-tech staple gun instead of a camera, blowing logic, characterization and narrative coherence to hell. Let’s see if I’ve got this right. Michael Clayton (Clooney) is an in-house “fixer.” That means a guy assigned to clean up the messes the firm’s important clients get into. I’ve talked to several people in powerful New York law firms who don’t know what that means (in those glass-box offices high above the canyons of the city where lives are sold and money is lost every day, everyone is a “fixer”) so I don’t feel as dumb as I thought I was, and this movie seems less superior than it pretends to be. Anyway, for the sake of the director’s creative pomposity, Michael is a former prosecutor from a family of cops whose once-promising career has sunk so low that he sweats bullets trying to hold together a job, have a relationship with his son, and keep the peace with a controlling ex-wife. Begging for salary advances and auctioning off the contents of his home to make ends meet, he still can’t pay off his gambling debts. Burned out from running interference from coast to coast, he hates his work but can’t quit because he’s broke. Half of the litigators he knows are on antidepressants, and one colleague (the excellent Tom Wilkinson) has already gone off his meds, stripped naked in the middle of a deposition, and run through a parking lot screaming. This movie will make you think twice before sending your children to law school.
Dispatched to Milwaukee to find his bipolar office mate with the manic meltdown, Michael discovers he was in the middle of trying to solve a $3 billion class action suit against an “agrochemical manufacturer” called U/North that was accused of killing its employees with the equivalent of germ warfare. The cold, lock-jawed U/North attorney that hired Kenner, Bach & Ledeen is Tilda Swinton, operating at the top of her sangfroid skills. Hired to reluctantly clean up corporate garage spills, Mr. Clooney is called a janitor. When Mr. Wilkinson’s character goes nuts and disappears, it’s a case of one janitor cleaning up after another janitor. He’s got to negotiate with Ms. Swinton or lose his law firm $9 million in legal fees, find the missing co-worker, win the case and figure out what any of this has to do with his 10-year-old son’s passion for a fictional fantasy novel called Realm and Conquest. Michael Clayton is 45 years old, bankrupt, his life in shreds, and he’s got one week to come up with $80,000 or end up on the bottom of the Hudson River courtesy of a gang that makes the Sopranos look like tooth fairies. Discovering the client’s products cause cancer, Michael decides to betray U/North and sabotage the case, putting the future of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen at risk. But wait, there’s more. We discover Kenner, Bach & Ledeen’s CEO (Sydney Pollack) has known everything all along, and everybody is betraying everybody. Meanwhile, Michael’s alcoholic brother loses his entire business investment in a bar, Mr. Wilkinson’s murder is written off as a suicide and the clues in the Realm and Conquest book lead to a field where Michael gets out to admire a field of beautiful stallions from his dreams and his car is blown up with a bomb planted by—your guess is as good as mine. Meanwhile, the movie introduces scores of tertiary characters, none well-defined or explored carefully enough to sustain interest; miraculously, Michael discovers his own conscience and saves the world from cancer, crooked lawyers and incoherent screenplays.
If you’ve stuck with me this far, you’re actually ahead of me, because I gave up trying to figure out this gumbo ages ago. Michael Clayton literally knocks its brains out trying to be clever, but it ends up being the same kind of smart-alecky filmmaking most of Mr. Clooney’s movies are famous for. (Who could forget the loathsome Syriana, the unsalvageable Solaris or the idiotic O Brother, Where Art Thou?) He’s capable of so much more, as the great Good Night, and Good Luck proved beyond debate. A man this suave, smart and fiendishly witty would undoubtedly make a great restaurateur, but his cinematic taste—in scripts, directors and movies that stand a chance to still be considered classics in the next century—really sucks.
Reed "... his car is blown up with a bomb planted by—your guess is as good as mine."
Rex, if you really don't know who blew up his car then either (a) you slept through most of the movie.
(b) you should cut back on the booze.
the movie tracked the bomb planers for 10 minutes before the blast and showed face to face conversation between the operators and the chief counsel. What more do you need?
hey!!!
this is something I have to see. no booze needed.
poker
Yea' dude. This movie was dope and U are way off or maybe it was just to deep for you. I am tryin' to find that book Realm and Conquest for more answers cause I know they are there. Anyone know anything about it? Holla.
It doesn't speak well of the Observer to allow its best writer to be impuned and insulted online. "Criticizing the critic" is one thing, but some of these more mindless comments give new meaning to "spam."
So Rex Reed is "the Observer's best writer"? If true, that's more a judgment on the journalistic quality of the Observer than a compliment to Reed. Anyone who terms the film "Syriana" as "loathsome" and claims there's "nothing real" about Clooney's latest film must have spent the last 20 years living in the Bible Belt or somewhere in the vicinity of corporate America where the handouts for media support are generous. See the film and don't worry about it's being too complex for the average US moviegoer. It's actually very simple: it's about corporate greed and absolute indifference to harming human beings or the environment, as long as a few can line their pockets with millions of dollars at the expense of the average US citizen. That's why Reed doesn't like it.
I thought I was the only one who disliked this film. We're obviously in the minority on this one. Except for the car bomb, I yawned during most of it. Thanks for reaffirming my thoughts!
This must surely be one of the worst film reviews ever written. I could cope if the review simply said, 'this film was too slow for me, so I didn't pay attention. Sorry, one star.' But no.
Instead he savages the film at every turn, and if you read the review you would think...'yeah right, clues from a kid's book and horses from a dream sequence? Sounds rubbish.' However, these details do not reveal the film's pomposity, only the reviewer's inability to concentrate. Events in the film simply do NOT happen as the author describes. It's like he's reviewing it from a plot summary on the side of a cornflakes box written by a confused four-year old.
I have just seen the film, it is an excellent, slow burning thriller with a sharp, witty script, and where the drama and excitement comes from character development, good acting and a kind of bleak, longing cinematography, matched perfectly by a subtle and superb soundtrack.
Do not confuse 'slow burning' with 'boring' or 'too long' though. This is a quietly gripping film, and I was never shifting in my seat. Just do not espect Bourne or Bond, this has no action sequences and a less convoluted, more believable plot than that. I am surprised that the reviewer enjoyed 'Good Night and Good Luck' but hated this, since that film has a similar slowness and reliance on dialogue and acting.
Michael Clayton is a superb film and Clooney's, Wilkinson's and Swinton's performances were fantastic.
Haven't seen the film yet, but I'm certainly looking forward to it. Anyone who says O Brother, Where Art Thou is "idiotic" needs to L-I-G-H-T-E-N U-P!
I saw the movie today. Several big time movie critics including Rex Reed didn't pay attention at a critical time. The reason Michael Clayton gets out of the car is because the three horses at dawn on a hillside were in the red book that Wilkinson was "reading", Realm of Conquests. Michael saw this as he was leafing through the book before the cops came in and hooked him. It's why Michael gets teary eyed and looks to the heavens for his lost friend. Paying attention to this sign from his friend saved him from the car bomb.
Reed's "review" is three-quarter's plot-rehash, and spoils by giving away far too much. That seems irresponsible, if not downright mean-spirited. The movie and prospective audiences deserve better from a reviewer of Reed's reputation. Three solid stars from this viewer, and four stars for several of the performers, especially Wilkinson and Pollack (it would not surprise to see either of them getting Oscar noms).
I really hate to make a personal attack on the critic here, but, hyperbole be damned, Rex Reed is by far the dumbest critic ever to review movies. This declaration has been brewing for some time, but I finally just have to come out and say it (on the glorious anonymity of the internet, no less!) I am constantly amazed by how many times Reed is "confused" by a fairly simple plot. Now, I have no problem with someone not liking a movie I liked, but Reed really has no business being paid to watch movies when he lacks the mental capabilities to follow the simplest plot lines. I first notices this when I saw a list of his worst movies of 2001 and noticed that any movie that involved the slightest bit of burden on the moviegoer to pay attention that year made the list- Mullholland Dr, Memento, Vanilla Sky, many of my favorite movies of the year. Again, simply not liking movies I like is fine, but it was quite clear that Reed was simply too dim to understand anything that falls out of the parameters of pure linear thought. It's almost comical, but really this review was the last straw. And he even calls the Bourne films confusing. The f***ing Bourne films!! I seriously don't know how even the most average filmgoer couldn't follow those, or Michael Clayton.
Whew. I've been wanting to say that for a while. God I hope he reads these comments. Of course, that would require being able to navigate a computer.
Just got home from the movie and couldn't believe this review. I got lost in Syriana but followed this one all the way through- It was a full house and you could have heard a pin drop throughout the entire movie except where the car blows up - so maybe Canadians are just easier to enthrall but my friend and I found it absorbing to the end.
THe critic obviously didn't watch the whole thing or he would have understood the various symbols- the horses, the U North advertisement etc.
How could he say that Michael found the evidence linking UNorth to cancer when that was what sent Arthur off the rails in the first place?
Anyway- it was a great movie and well worth the time and admission.
I'm sorry but this review is total rubbish. If you couldn't figure out who blew up his car, well, that's just sad.
Clayton was not trying to win the suit, was not planning to betray the company (he took the $80k + 3 year contract), and it was not the employees, but the customers of U/North that were dying of cancer.
These mistakes, coupled with the spoilers, make for one pathetic review. Please retire.
Doesn't anyone fact-check at the NY Observer? Gilroy wrote the first Bourne film and co-wrote the last.
As for the review itself, see the comments above, especially Becky who caught what any observant 16-year-old would catch.
This review is an embarrassment to Mr. Reed and to your publication.
I agree with the reviewer, this movie is wildly overpraised. Too many of the subplots are just left hanging and the one about the son is just supposed to be resolved with a speech by Michael to his son, no real communication occurs. The early subplot about the hit-and-run is also left hanging.
Further, we are left hanging about what Michael thinks about all these things, or almost everything, for that matter, except rather trite predictable reactions to what is happening.
I can't say the movie is bad, but it does not deserve a "90" on rottentomatoes or an "82" on Metacritic.
The main problem I feel is the movie just tells us what happens step by step and not much more. And the usual corporate greedmasters come in for their usual skewering (strawmen), without any possible justification for their actions, past or present.
I also think showing the flashforward first is a mistake and just a way to make a movie seem better than it is.
There are a lot more criticisms, but most reviewers don't even bring them up, which says more about critics, than about the movie.
I think Reed saw a different film from the one that I saw.
"A man this suave, smart and fiendishly witty would undoubtedly make a great restaurateur, but his cinematic taste—in scripts, directors and movies that stand a chance to still be considered classics in the next century—really sucks."
Funny and ironic comments from an idiot. Rex Reed obviously is not smart. If he couldn't follow the plot of this movie ("...and his car is blown up with a bomb planted by—your guess is as good as mine.") he's dumb or just wacked out on drugs while watching the movies he reviews.
Did this reviewer even watch this movie? U-North did not poison its employees, its product leached into well water and affected small farms. Others have categorized Reed's more obvious gaffes. Ignore this review and see the movie. It is quite good. Not "uproariously funny" but a really good movie.
rex reed saw the flash forward the fell asleep -- his review sucks, period.
sorry -- typo --
rex reed saw the flash forward then fell asleep, woke up, and wrote this joke of a review.
I will no longer view this sight or read this newspaper. This reviewer is clearly a bitter, confused and utterly tasteless waste of non-creative empowerment.
Seriously, does Rex Reed have control files on the top brass at the NY Observer? How else to explain his continued employment as a film critic? This is one of the most worst reviews--perhaps THE worst--I have ever come across in 30+ years of reading film reviews. Fortunately, I think enough people have come to realize that Reed is a very poor guide indeed to cinema for thinking adults...
I agree with the critic's critics. Absolutely ridiculous review. If one is to be paid to review films, and have an impact on peoples livelyhoods, at least one should stay awake throughout the film, and leave personal biases at the door.
And to call "Oh brother, Where Art Thou?" IDIOTIC only confirms and supports my decision not to listen to movie critics in the future. That film proved Clooneys diverse abilities as an actor, and be much more than a GQ tough-guy.
Don't quit your day job.
Rex Reed did a terrible job reviewing this movie. I'll admit that I was confused wtching this for about 45 minutes, but then it all came together. Excellent acting and a building suspense - what more could you ask for from a dramatic movie?
To Tyler, who asked about the book in the movie - Realm and Conquest: Unfortunately, it is a creation of the producer/writer of the film - Tony Gilroy. Mr. Gilroy used the book as a metaphor for truth and as a means of trying to connect father and son in the same way he connected with his own son through fantasy novels
The Critic Engages in Lot of Speculative Assertions
"accused of killing its employees with the equivalent of germ warfare."
As noted above it was consumers not employees. The plaintiff focused on was obviously a farm girl. Nor is this remotely equivalent to "germ warfare."
"He’s got to negotiate with Ms. Swinton or lose his law firm $9 million in legal fees, find the missing co-worker, win the case and figure out what any of this has to do with his 10-year-old son’s passion for a fictional fantasy novel called Realm and Conquest."
His job was not to negotiate with Ms. Swinton. His job was never even remotely close to winning the case. Nor did he have to connect the book.
"he’s got one week to come up with $80,000 or end up on the bottom of the Hudson River courtesy of a gang that makes the Sopranos look like tooth fairies." How did you invent this characterization?
"Discovering the client’s products cause cancer, Michael decides to betray U/North and sabotage the case, putting the future of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen at risk." False. Michael didnt sabatoge the case, you seem to mix up his character and his friend. He did help get evidence after they tried to kill him (apparently you missed that part?)
"keep the peace with a controlling ex-wife."
Not much of a summary of the ex-wife. I suppose I could have missed this.
"Half of the litigators he knows are on antidepressants," I wouldnt be surprised if this were true, but was it actually in the movie that anyone was on medication other than the one person?
"Michael discovers his own conscience and saves the world from cancer, crooked lawyers and incoherent screenplays."
The reviewer seems to gone out of his way to project cliches onto this movie what were not there.
our office liked it:)
The main thing I disagreed with in this review was when Rex Reed said, maybe I'm not as dumb as I thought I was. Bourne ultimatum - confusing? Syriana -Loathsome?
Rex you should be reviewing for a children's magazine.
Forget that - my 8 year old has more sophisticated taste.
The book doesn't exist. sorry
Review, bad. Movie, great!
If the movie was too hard to follow or appreciate, those two comments should be understandable enough to Rex Reed. It seems good screenwriting and complicated details are not meant for people like you who fail to see genius due to your own simplemindedness or mediocrity.