In Continuum.

This is not a movie I would recommend just to anybody out there with nothing to do on a Friday night after work. This movie is some heavy duty stuff, and it is definitely not a breeze to sit through, simply because the director does not employ the usual tactics to tell his side of the story. Director Tony Gilroy is not a foreigner to thrillers, since he was also the person who wrote the screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum. However, he is definitely someone new in the director's chair, and it is obvious that there has been a lot of influences from his work in the Bourne movies. Nonetheless, it is very impressive for a first-time director to produce a movie with such depth and poignancy as Michael Clayton, because this is arguably quite an experimental piece. You don't get the usual gun fights, the car chases, the great explosions in the middle of a subway station to thrill the audience. We have people talking about winning cases, losing cases, killing someone and manipulations. This is a talking movie, and it demands your full attention throughout - not even a toilet break is allowed. 

Michael Clayton tells the story of Michael Clayton - played by George Clooney, an in-house fixer dealing with the most difficult case of his career. He belongs to the largest corporate law firm in New York, and when one of the firm's more brilliant lawyers, Arthur Edens - played by Tom Wilkinson, strips down halfway through a hearing against the firm he represents in an effort to sabotage the case, Michael then steps in to handle the dirty work. It's not a job that he loves, not only because of the kind of moral issues he have to deal with on a day to day basis, but also the real life he has to deal with outside of work. He is divorced, and he is heavy on debt. The company that Michael's law firm was supposed to be representing is called U-North, a drug company in New York. They have been accused of producing harmful medicine and bypassing legal pathways just to make them publicly available. Arthur Edens, who was supposed to be the architect of their defense, grew a conscience and went against everything that he was supposed to stand for. Somebody needed to clean the mess up, and it was up to Michael Clayton.

At the very beginning of this movie, we are treated to what happened four days after the reason everything occurred. We see Michael at an underground gambling den, then we see Michael tackling a case of a rich upper class American who just made a hit and run in town. We see Michael then driving into the countryside - we are not sure where he was driving to - until he saw three wild horses up on the hills, which he became strangely attracted to. So he got off his Mercedes, walks up the slope to admire the animals in the quiet of the dawn, when his Mercedes explodes in the distance and bursts into a great ball of fire. We are left pretty much confused at this point, and the story goes back to four days earlier to show us just what happened prior to the assassination. In my opinion, a very fitting start to a movie with a great many puzzle pieces to solve.

The film does not present itself in a very obvious manner in the sense that, you are not given a clear idea of who is who in this movie. We know the obvious, that Michael Clayton is the guy that a lot of people trust to deal with a mess. But there are other characters whose roles you got to figure out yourself. Names will be thrown around between the characters that you do not know who they belong to until a little later on in the film, and everything else is not clearly spelled out for the audience. Like I said, this movie demands a hundred percent attention, and it does not allow room for toilet breaks at all. One trip to the loo and you might miss some key plot points, and be lost for the next half of the movie or so. Pieces of the movie may seem rather disjointed at first, scenes being unrelated whatsoever. But it is not difficult at the very end to realize that everything else made sense. This is not to say that director Tony Gilroy employed what Christopher Nolan did with Memento. He goes in a chronological order here, but not exactly a very clear order in which we can just remain in our seats and be passive viewers.

Also, as mentioned before, this movie does not reply on car chases and giant explosions to tell you that it is going to be a thriller ride. Choked with smart lines and a overwhelming sense of danger, it is a wonder how the plot almost always manages to keep the sense of crisis under wraps at the same time. It does not come up to your face to tell you that "Hey, this is the exciting part". Throughout the movie, we keep getting this sense of underlying danger, something brewing underneath the surface though we can't put our finger on it. You know that something is happening, but it is nothing explosive at all. The cues are subtle, and they are very quiet - almost like a whisper. But they are there, and that is probably what made this film truly stand out for the rest. It is how unconventional everything felt to me as an audience, like a breath of fresh air. A different kind of thriller that does not treat the audience as idiots. This film is obviously not out there to make money, but something out there because it needs to be out there.

In terms of the performances, it is a grade A from every angle. George Clooney nailed the tone as the washed up fixer tired of his job and life, and we see his excellent portrayal of Michael Clayton and putting aside his usual schmuck attitude as Daniel Ocean in the Ocean's series. We see him being beat up and torn down, but there is still that knowledge at the back of our minds that this guy knows what he is doing, and he is pretty damn smart. Other supporting actors are equally, if not better, than him. Tom Wilkinson was perfect as the lawyer on the edge of his sanity. He is probably the only actor I have seen who has the ability to play somewhat the same person, and yet in completely different shoes in every film. It's just that slight adjustments in his tone or facial expressions, and you know that he is playing someone different altogether - it's pretty amazing. Then there is Tilda Swinton, someone whom I love as an actress. There is just something about her I guess, and she has always been playing this successful career woman, or an evil queen - in the Chronicles of Narnia. It is a rare case to see her breakdown, and that is the case in Michael Clayton. She is the litigator of U-North in this movie, and her company is standing on the edge of a knife here. It was interesting to see a drastic change in her usual roles, and she definitely pulled it off as the confused character who knows that she has to do something to contain the situation, but not exactly sure how. 

Equally impressive is the supporting cast of this film. Sydney Pollack delivers some of the best punch lines in this movie, it almost seems like they were all saved for him. Then again, he is also the producer of this film, so I guess it is not difficult to see why he saved the best for himself. Despite the limited amount of screen time in relative to his other colleagues, Sydney Pollack was still a force to be reckoned with on screen, always delivering and always punching you in the guts with his stares and words. I especially liked the scene when he said, "He is an asshole, and he knows it!" Brilliant. 

Overall, I would say that this film definitely deserves the praises it has been getting from critics. It is a different kind a thriller, and it serves you a different taste altogether. You don't always see thrillers like Michael Clayton that does not rely on action and twists to tell a great story. The final scene in the movie, the final confrontation, is probably the most subtle yet powerful scene I have seen in a long time. It was satisfying, and it was just tasteful from the beginning till the end, and it made a great closure to a brilliant story told in the span of two hours. To emphasize once again, this film is definitely not for everybody out there. You can't just grab someone and expect that person to like the movie like some Audrey Hepburn film. This is a rough ride, but a ride you don't exactly want to miss either. A thumbs up for Michael Clayton, for me.