Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is the "fixer" for a prestigious law firm. A client has a nasty auto accident? An unpleasant story is about to hit the papers? Michael's the go-to guy; he has a knack for fixing this sort of thing, quickly and quietly.
When one of Michael's colleagues, Arthur (Tom Wilkinson) suddenly goes berserk in the middle of a deposition, declaring his love for the young woman who's testifying and stripping naked in the conference room, Michael is summoned to fix things. His boss (Sydney Pollack) is more worried about the damage to the firm's reputation; the client, a large agrichemical company, is more worried about the impact on the class-action case in which Arthur was defending them. Their agendas do not always overlap, and Michael is stuck in the middle, trying to please both.
It's always nice (and increasingly rare) to see a reasonably intelligent drama aimed at an adult audience, but I didn't think this one was entirely successful. Wilkinson's performance is wildly overdone, and a bit too reminiscent of Peter Firth's ranting in Network. The glimpses we get of Clooney's family life are terribly melodramatic, and Gilroy seems to think that if one family member in crisis will make Michael more sympathetic, then four family members in crisis will really make us love the guy.
I very much liked Tilda Swinton, though, who plays the in-house counsel for Arthur's client; she's particularly good in a scene where we see her rehearsing answers for an upcoming interview, trying to get the phrasing just right.
Michael Clayton isn't a terrible movie -- there are certainly worse ways to spend an afternoon -- but it's too frantic and overheated to be a really memorable one.
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