Michael Clayton

Director: Tony Gilroy
Year: 2007
My Rating: **

We bought this on-demand the night before the Oscars to try to catch up on the categories in which we were less informed; had it not been playing in my living room, I might have walked out. It was kind of confusing, featuring seemingly disconnected material and characters at the beginning, and even once the story became a little clearer it never made me really care about anyone involved.

As a suspense movie, it didn’t really have enough build. As a corrupt-institution movie, it was too unclear on which company was which to truly foster a contempt for corruption, and ultimately the plot of the actual corruption ended up feeling too limited to be truly staggering. Operating in a similarly dysfunctional, disillusioned world, at least Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead moved forward with distinct (if negative) momentum; Michael Clayton came pretty close to stalling out – not a very effective device for creating suspense or attachment to characters or plot.

The Cloon is gorgeous, even when stressing, but I’m not entirely sure why he was nominated; I have a hunch that Hollywood is loving to love him right now and is somewhat overly enchanted with those smoky eyes – understandable, but why waste an Oscar nom on it? Same goes for Tom Wilkinson – good-ish, but a waste of a nomination; I’d have preferred to see Max von Sydow celebrated for his incredible scenes in The Diving Bell.... Tilda McCrazyPants Swinton was good, but again, nothing to really write home about. I was mostly impressed with her ability to look somewhat human for once.

The final speech by Georgeous is what gave the movie its second star. Those 2 minutes were the only ones that remotely moved me past neutrality. But for a mere 120 seconds of quality, you can skip this one.