Movie review: Michael Clayton

Oh, those evil pesticides (and the evil companies who market them).

by John P. Meyer

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy scripted the adrenaline-injected Bourne movies (all three of them) as well as the edgy kidnap/romantic triangle thriller Proof of Life (2000) and the sexy Faustian law firm fantasy The Devil's Advocate (1997). With Michael Clayton Gilroy makes his feature film directorial debut.

From the director's chair, Gilroy channels Costa-Gavras - or he might as well be, because the story (which he also wrote) chronicles the travails of a big corporate legal defense team charged with fending off the big buck extraction efforts of plaintiff attorneys bringing a class action suit against their insecticide chemical-producing clients. And there's misdirection, murder and mayhem involved.

George Clooney takes on the title role; Michael Clayton's a sinking legal expediter with a nasty poker habit and an affinity for horses (though not the sort you might expect). He's been enlisted by his firm's senior partner, Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack, as a straight-up ethics-be-damned son-of-a-bitch with the bedside manner of a cobra - go, Syd, go!), to bail out and bring home the firm's litigator in charge of their mega-million dollar class action defense, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson).

Seems Edens has recently gone off his medication, as evidenced by his closed-circuit camera-recorded strip tease while in the midst of negotiations with the plaintiff's legal team - a performance accompanied by some wild rambling that indicates he might have experienced a change of heart in the matter of those-with-the-power vs. those-taking-it-on-the-chin (and wanting to get paid for it).

There's plenty of gray-shaded moral and ethical bankruptcy to go around here, but the worst offenders are represented by the chemical company's office of corporate counsel, headed up by Karen Crowder (and played with courageous eccentricity by Tilda Swinton). Karen's the kind of leave-nothing-to-chance controller who rehearses what will later appear to be spontaneous commentaries in front of her dressing room mirror. When things seem to be diverging from plan, Karen contacts the private corporate assassins her company has on retainer and gives them the green light.

The mid-course highlight of this murderous morality play is an encounter between Clayton (Clooney) and Edens (Wilkinson) that occurs in an alley after the latter has bolted from his hotel room in an effort to escape the grasp of his employers. Observing these two acting heavyweights going toe-to-toe, hurling spittle-charged stream-of-consciousness aphorisms in place of upper cuts, provides for unexpected guilty viewing pleasure.

Aside from this emotive tour-de-force sequence and the satisfying bitch-slapping of corporate hierarchy that occurs near the film's conclusion, the most memorable sequence occurs when "Mr. Verne" (Robert Prescott, as the ultra-efficient leader of the crew of contract killers) orchestrates and carries out a hotel-room hit with emotionless efficiency; what we witness is a cold-blooded murder entirely devoid of brutality that somehow leaves us far more disturbed than if we'd experienced a violent act.

Stacked up against any of the Bourne flicks, Michael Clayton (at 119 minutes) seems laggard and weighted down by a surfeit of preachiness, but it's one of those sly cinematic constructions that comes at you sideways and punches you in the gut on its way past; attentive filmgoers will be rewarded for their efforts.

IDENTITY CRISIS: "You're a manic-depressive." - Clayton to Edens

"I am Shiva, the god of death." - Edens' reply

IDENTITY CRISIS, PT. II: "I'm not the enemy." - Clayton to Edens

"Then who are you?" - Edens' reply