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Director: Tony Gilroy

Starring: George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack

Prolific screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, best known for writing all three of the Bourne scripts, makes his directorial debut with a powerhouse cast in this dark, dramatic thriller. His direction has style, but there is too much going on at the beginning of the film and when it suddenly turned into a flashback, I missed it. Was it me? Was there something shown to tell us we were going back? At any rate, the film moves slowly and awkwardly at times, but its not overly predictable and features good acting by Pollack (who is normally a director/producer) and Clooney (who is always good) and a powerhouse, show-stopping performance by Tom Wilkinson in a supporting role.

George Clooney is the title character, who is a go-to ‘fixer’ (Kind of a lawyer/PI cross, I gather), for a big powerful law firm. He has alot of fixing to do. Both in his own life where he has desperate money problems and at work, where Arthur, a manic/depressive, and one of the firm’s top sharks, played by Tom Wilkinson in his best role (even better than his Oscar-nominated performance from In The Bedroom), has gone off his meds and is threatening to destroy the firm’s defence of an evil chemical company, U-North, from a giant lawsuit. While Michael tries to find Arthur and bring him back under control, Karen Crowder, the head in-house counsel for U-North, played by Tilda Swinton, has her own ideas on how to handle this.

Michael Clayton is a Firm-like feature that has guys in suits (or out of their suit in Wilkinson’s case) doing their best to handle a tough situation. This is not a bad movie, but I found it awkward in some spots and too slow in others. I wonder if being a lawyer is really this interesting?

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