Michael Clayton or Too Many Old White Guys to Keep Track Of

The Oscars are upon us, and for once I have seen almost all of the films nominated for Best Picture. We'll see if I can squeeze in Atonement sometime between now and February 24th, but after last Friday, I'm up to 4 out of 5. I'd consider myself pretty prepared this year, and I can tell you what's not going to walk away with Best Picture - Michael Clayton. Don't get me wrong, George Clooney is still a dreamboat at age 46 (and a good actor, blah, blah, blah) and the movie was very well put-together, but it just wasn't award-worthy.

I think this film could be characterized as the Wicked of legal-thriller movies. Unlike the lawyer-heroes of Erin Brockovich or The Client, the protagonists in Michael Clayton go to bat for the bad guy. It's the untold story of the deadly weed-killer lawsuit, told from the perspective of the firm who represents the company that poisons farmers. It's a good genre pic with a good twist. Clayton, who we are supposed to identify with the most, is "the janitor" for the law firm Kenner Bach & Ledeen. No, not like a Good Will Hunting kind of janitor who turns out to be a genius lawyer or something - although, that would make for a great movie. Clayton is the kind of "janitor" who cleans up the career-messes of the firms' lawyers, though the film doesn't really explain what exactly that entails. It simply alludes to the fact that he's done some pretty bad stuff.

I don't know why, but I expected a little more action from this movie. We're introduced to Michael Clayton as this person who "fixes things," which automatically screams thrill and excitement to me. All of the references to the bad things he's done, the car explosion in the opening scene, and the fact that this film was directed by the screenwriter of the Bourne trilogy made me expect a little ass-kicking. I know it's not a spy chase movie, but no one was even thrown through a window or had their car run off the road! For most of the movie, all we got was a slew of aging lawyers with similar sounding English names, (like Arthur and Walter), doing the much less exciting lawyer equivalent of jumping from one tall building to another - which just means staying up all night settling lawsuits for evil agriculture companies. Even when the credits rolled over a scene of Michael Clayton getting into a cab and saying "just drive" I held out hope that the car behind them housed some sort of assassin who would jump out with a gun and shoot him right before the screen went black. I was let down.

In addition to a few subplots about Clayton's personal life that don't provide any insight to his character, we never see the extraordinary ending to compliment this unique perspective-twist on the genre. As Daniel Carlson wrote in Pajiba's review, the film's events are "two or three layers removed from fully engaging the viewer." Perhaps it would have been more engaging to indulge a little in some action-packed scenes rather than make the viewer guess what the deal is with Clayton's brother or son.

This film was like a 40 degree day. And in the words of Stringer Bell from The Wire (Season 3), "there's nothing special about a 40 degree day. " The twist on an old concept is clever, but not really something to write home about.

This entry was posted by Lady Amy, on Monday, February 04, 2008. You can leave your response.