Michael Clayton
Written and directed by Tony Gilroy
Starring George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Michael O’Keefe, Sydney Pollack
Rated R

Send me to jail. I’m not guilty, but I’m used to it. — Vin Diesel, Find Me Guilty

Think back to the summer of 1995, when The Usual Suspects was released into theaters. All of you bastards were up in the sky with that movie, saying “Holy shit! This is freaking brilliant!” and “I never saw that twist coming,” and I bet one of you bastards even said “FUCK THIS STUPID SHIT! In four years, a man by the name of M. Night Shyamalan would make a better twist than you little fuckers! Just wait and see, pricks!”

Well, it just happens to be that Michael Clayton IS this year’s The Usual Suspects. I know, they both have very un-similar plots, but if you look at it closely, they are ALMOST the same thing. They follow the same formula — you question what the hell is going on and at the end they lay it down right in front of you. But that is just it — Michael Clayton doesn’t do it right at the last second of the movie. It lays it out at the beginning, and you don’t know what they are doing until the end. Kind of like Memento, without the whole short-term memory thing.

Michael Clayton works for the simple reason of the formula. It’s not a mind-fuck movie, because they can’t even do a twist that good. No, Michael Clayton works because you must pay attention to it. You must listen to every last detail, watch every last movement, question every thing the characters are saying. You won’t figure any of it out until the end, but they give you a hint — the ending is nothing that you will believe. Michael Clayton may have one of the best endings of all-time, but all you need to do is look just a little bit closer at it.

Michael Clayton is an attorney who works for one of the biggest corporate law firms in New York City. Let’s stop right there for a second. We know that this is a law firm that is huge, but we don’t even know at the beginning of the movie that it is trusting. That key question leaves you throughout the entire length of the movie, and it doesn’t get answered. Maybe it’s better, but it is all up to you to decide.

But Clayton isn’t the perfect guy. Truth is, he has a lot going on with him also. He spends too much time on his job, he’s going through a tough divorce with his son in the middle of it, and he owes over 75k. The problem that he spends too much time on his job is because EVERY SINGLE PERSON at his firm knows that Michael is the toughest one they have, so they use him to investigate a case that deals with U/North and a multi-million dollar settlement. But Michael’s co-worker and very good friend, the brilliant but very strange and seemingly nutty Arthur Edens sabotages the case. Edens knows that something is going on, but because he seems nutty, no one believes him.

No one, but U/North’s Karen Crowder, and she has to keep his big mouth silent.

This is where you start to question yourself. Arthur Edens is Edgar Allen Poe’s wet dream — he has it all figured out, but he just has to get a hold of himself. The problem is that Arthur Edens has stopped taking his meds completely, and strips and chases an interviewee around naked. That’s only the beginning on why they consider him a prime suspect.

Yes, you are probably asking me if I’m off my meds, and trust me — I am not (well, not yet, but not at this very moment). Michael Clayton is directed by Tony Gilroy, who also wrote it. He also wrote the Bourne movies, so he has a very good idea on how to trick the viewer and how to entertain. To say that he is the next Bryan Singer is a stretch, but I think that Gilroy is doing a pretty damn good job at what he does here. He has a vision and he keeps it the way that he sees it. In the first fifteen minutes, the film seems like they just thrown scenes together that didn’t make a bunch of sense. Gilroy does this to trick the viewer into telling him to pay very close attention to what will be going on the screen. These fifteen minutes don’t matter until the very end of the movie, but these fifteen minutes allow us to meet the characters.

Being as it may, the first one that we meet (voice-over) is Tom Wilkinson‘s portrayal of the character Arthur Edens. At first, Gilroy tries to make it seem like that we have our very own narrator, but clearly that is not the case. He plays the character so great and so wild that we begin to think that he has rolled off of his rocker too. I’d consider Wilkinson’s role as one of the best roles of the year, right with Downey’s character in Zodiac and Michael Shannon’s character in Bug. Wilkinson should really be looked at by the Academy, and I will never again look at him with the hatred that I used to look at him with.

We also meet Karen Crowder, played by Tilda Swinton. She doesn’t do that bad of a job, but she isn’t given much to work with. She’s only really in the film for fifteen minutes, and each scene she is in, she’s only there to display emotions the entire time. Swinton doesn’t really kick into full throttle until the end of the movie, but those last moments are exciting.

And then, we meet the Big Kahuna, Mr. George Clooney who plays Michael Clayton”¦ and do I REALLY have to explain George Clooney and how well he did? Michael Clayton is just another one of those characters that just fit in with what he can do. Clooney is so talented and amazing acting-wise that once Michael Clayton is over, you want to see more of him. I know I stuck by him with his best of roles (Ocean’s Eleven) and his worst (Spy Kids and Batman and Robin), so it should be no surprise that I give his character two thumbs up on my act-o-meter.

But that’s just it. When the movie ends, we don’t want it to end. We want to see more. That’s where I am going to say that one Michael Clayton isn’t enough. I’m talking about a damn trilogy that features the character. Let’s see more of Clayton and his job. How about giving Clayton a different case? They leave the ending open for a sequel, so why don’t we give it one. It just may be the next Bourne series.

Trust me, seeing three George Clooneys are better than seeing three Matt Damons.

**** out of ****