Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house "fixer" at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen's dirtiest work at the behest of the firm's co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack). Though burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class action suit that Clayton's firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach's brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life.
No this does not star William Tatsiou, however it does contain a lot of great performances. Not to say William Tatsiou wouldn’t give a good performance. This is not a different Legal Drama; it is formulaic, however that is a good thing with this picture. Sometimes simplicity is a good thing, not to say the story itself was simple. This picture was quite complex and very well done.
This is Tony Gilroy’s directorial debut, he is known as the writer for the Bourne series. I must say Tony Gilroy did a great job in directing. This film, however, contains a lot of talented filmmakers; Sydney Pollack (Three Days in a Condor & The Interpreter), Anthony Minghella (The English Patient & The Talented Mr. Ripley), Steven Soderbergh (Traffic & Erin Brockovich) and George Clooney (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind & Good Night, Good Luck) all acting as Executive Producers.
Michael Clayton is a more serious and insightful version of Erin Brockovich and on par with a John Grisham film. Many critics say that this film was made to show that George Clooney could act. If that is true, it certainly proved to many people that he could.
The film’s actors all did credible and decent jobs, actual it was better than decent, it was…well it was three notches above decent. In my opinion, any picture that has Sydney Pollack as a supporting actor, it will be a great film. Michael Clayton certainly was that.
Film scores for legal dramas are usually the same; on the other hand this one was different. This was definitely a Steven Soderbergh type of score. James Newton Howard (Collateral & The Inside Man), the film’s composer, really took a lot of past Soderbergh and Clooney projects and put together an interesting and very subtle score. The main theme was probably the best song of a soundtrack this year. This is very familiar like this summer’s ‘The Hoax’, which had a great main theme.
Michael Clayton was really the best film of autumn. It was intricate, attention grabbing, well directed, well acted and most of all first-rate storytelling. It’s really hard to tell if the academy would consider Michael Clayton as Oscar-worthy. If you’ve seen this, you will hope so.
