Michael Clayton
Composite Score: 87.2
Starring: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollack, Austin Williams, Bill Raymond, Ken Howard, Merritt Wever, Robert Prescott, Terry Serpico, and Douglas McGrath
Director: Tony Gilroy
Writer: Tony Gilroy
Genres: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Legal
MPAA Rating: R for language including some sexual dialogue
Box Office: $92.99 million worldwide
My take on Watching This Film:
Michael Clayton is Tony Gilroy’s feature film debut about the titular lawyer/fixer who uncovers a criminal conspiracy and cover-up perpetrated by one of his firm’s largest clients. The film stars George Clooney in the titular lead role joined by Tilda Swinton in an Oscar-winning supporting role as Karen Crowder the in-house counsel for the unscrupulous company in question, Tom Wilkinson as Arthur Edens the primary attorney at Clayton’s firm handling the U-North cases, and Merritt Wever as Anna a key plaintiff in the case against U-North. The film is a legal thriller that unfolds in a not entirely linear fashion as we follow Michael as he juggles his business responsibility to fix the messy situation with U-North that has been made messier by a change of heart in Arthur with his personal responsibilities for his son, his brother’s investing debts, and his own gambling problems, not to mention his own friendship with Arthur and their law firm’s merger going on in the background. Though the plot can get a bit convoluted and overstuffed at points, it’s a film that never lets the audience lose interest from start to finish thanks in large part to the performances from Clooney, Swinton, and Wilkinson as well as a strong script that sought to take on the specter of big business back in 2007. I will attest to not having seen Syriana, but I’d make an argument that Michael Clayton is the character that Clooney was born to play – cool, understated, and just stressed enough to give him some character development to chew on, and I really enjoyed how he treated the character. Likewise, Swinton’s portrayal of a newly appointed lawyer under fire who has to choose between the money and the morality is actually terrifying. Her character’s development throughout the film is palpable and almost tragic, but she plays it with striking realism that never moralizes on any of her decisions and doesn’t seek to justify them either. It’s a captivating performance that I’m glad won her an Oscar, but I also wish that she could have had just a little bit more screentime for us to really get invested in her character, as she disappears for extended periods of the film, and her absence is felt. For me, Wilkinson actually gave the best performance in the film, but maybe that’s because he’s the one with the most to do in terms of pulling on the audience’s heartstrings and giving these big moments of emotion and mania, but I believe that in many of the other years of the 2000s, he too would have won a supporting actor Oscar for what he does here; unfortunately, he happened to be up against Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh, so he had no real hope of winning. The acting and intensely gripping plot of Michael Clayton have helped it stand the test of time to become one of the all-time greats. At the same time, I will grant you that the film might be too convoluted for its own good at times and definitely benefits from a rewatch, which raised it way up in my own estimations. If you find yourself watching it and feeling totally lost, I’d encourage you to give it a second chance because that second round really did it for me. Currently, you can stream this film on Amazon Prime Video if you’d like to give it a go.
