Dir. Tony Gilroy, US, 2007, 120 mins
Cast: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson
Review by
Carol Allen
Clooney is not only one of the film world's sexiest men, he also makes intelligent creative choices as an actor, director and producer, particularly in his collaboration Section Eight with Steven Soderbergh. This well made, grown up drama is one of them.
Clooney plays the title character, Michael Clayton, a once brilliant lawyer, whose disastrous personal life - divorce, gambling and a failed business venture - has left him deeply in debt and reduced to working as a "fixer" for a top New York corporate law firm. He does the firm's dirty work, concealing and clearing up their rich clients' messes and misdemeanours, from hit and runs to shoplifting wives. He hates his work and is deeply cynical about it but his need for money, and his loyalty to Marty (Sydney Pollack), head of the firm, has him trapped. Crunch time arrives when he comes into conflict with an agricultural chemical company and their tough in-house lawyer Karen Crowder (Swinton), whom Marty's firm are defending against an action accusing them of manufacturing a poisonous weed killer.
While Clooney is excellent as the conflicted Clayton, forced to face up to his weaknesses and rediscover his strengths, the show role goes to Wilkinson, as Edens, the firm's top lawyer, who has a crisis of conscience over the action, which leads him to try to sabotage the case he is defending. He is superb as usual. It is his staged "suicide", which is the ice cold shock that reveals the total ruthlessness of the company and provides the turning point for Michael. Even so, you are never sure on what side of his moral dilemma he will come down. Swinton makes Karen a chillingly fascinating character. Because she's a woman, one's expectations of her gender create a hope that she will rebel against what she is expected to do. For her, though, winning is her ruling principal, even though she lets us know she is shaken by the lengths to which she finds herself prepared to go, while Pollack gives an interesting portrayal of a basically decent man, who is ruled by pragmatism.
The story telling in the first half is somewhat complicated and obscure and it takes a while to get to grips with the facts of Clooney's character. Once the story gets into gear, however, and reveals its central theme, the action is perfectly clear and it develops into a thrilling and engrossing drama with very strong, well written scenes and dramatic moments, including a telling exchange between Michael and his young son, and a dénouement between Swinton and Clooney, which is positively electric.
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