Sat, 03 Nov 2007

Michael Clayton - ****

I went to the movie theater the other day. Yes, the real one. Yes it's been a while since I was last in a theater. I was on 'forced p.t.o.' and decided to use one of my free AMC movie passes from work.

The two nearest AMC theaters weren't showing much of anything of interest this week. The two quality movies had weird show times as well. I guess the theaters want to filter people in for that Tyler Perry and Saw IV crap. Anyway, since Eastern Promises was only going to be late in the day, I decided to go see Michael Clayton.

Most of you won't go see this in the theater unless you're like me-- being asked to take days off to lower your accrued vacation hours-- but I still don't want to spoil the movie for a lot of you. That said- let's get the description out of the way--

The movie is about the titular character, a lawyer, who gets sent in to clean up the mess made by his friend and coworker in a deposition in a HUGE case their firm has. The friend basically had a breakdown and is off his meds and Michael Clayton has to wrap up the loose ends. The loose ends are unraveling as he's doing this and you hope he can do it before the movie ends.

Here's the main problem about the movie though- it's a movie about a law case- lawyers and deals. How's that for escapism? How do I convince people that this is basically a 4 kenny-asterisks™ movie but it's about (mostly) some lawyers? That said- it's great movie.

Everyone in the movie is great. Once again, we need some Brits to show us how to be American -- Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. Those two are perfect in this and no, you're not going to be distracted by knowing who they are. The only distraction is when you first see Tilda Swinton and her character has all her clothes laid out and she's practicing for an interview- even though the scene is perfect, you think 'damn, they made her look matronly', but it works (she's supposed to lookbe a strong female lead corporate lawyer - maybe one who has sacrificed her personal life to get where she is). And Wilkinson- he's way underrated. Even Clooney's good- this movie makes you wish he did more movies like this and fewer Ocean's movies.

Go see it, even if you hate "legal thrillers". There's a tight efficiency in the story-telling and presentation that keeps everything moving and will keep you interested.

03 Nov 15:30 | /movies | 0 comment(s)