Michael Clayton

Ah, a pretty good film about how a man topples an evil corporation that did its best to obscure, mask, and road block its opponents into a stalemate and eventually achieving its aims: paying little to the plaintiffs while continuing to market their obviously harmful product, because the amount of money coming into the CEOs overrules the money that would go into fixing said product into something safer. But, still, first and foremost this film is not about some...not really lawyer person doing the morally good thing and bringing down the company for the good of the planet.

He managed to turn his conversation with Karen Crowder at the end into a confession of nearly killing him and definitely killing his charge Arthur. It's all about revenge. George Clooney had no other motivation to bring down this company other than the fact that he suspected someone had killed Arthur. It only turned really, truly personal when they stupidly tried to kill him. Of course the evil henchmen screwed up. They always do!

Since I'm a media student, I'll go ahead and just focus on the technical aspects of the film, namely the story. Touched on above, I can't tell if the film would have been better if it was started right at the beginning of the trouble or if it hadn't shown us the future and double-backed. I mean, it does say "4 days earlier" not long after the car bomb and cars don't usually explode. Obviously, someone was trying to kill him. We don't even have to get halfway through the film before we can recognize the enemy as the evil company. Obviously the evil company attempted to kill him so that they could more effectively clean up the mess their rogue lawyer made.

I guess you could argue that it made for an enticing beginning, to draw the audience in and make them want to stay, but it's a film about lawyers! Everyone hates lawyers! It will eventually get pretty boring and...it was. It was a little boring. And a little annoying. I kinda wish the little boy hadn't factored in at all and I'm not sure what his purpose was anyway. Was the boy's fantasy book (geez, was it Realm & Conquerors?) really that important to the story? I was under the impression that Arthur, as crazy as he was, always had a tangible idea of what was going on with that company and he proved his genius, if not his recklessness, during that scene where he calls - I'm not even sure who. He called someone merely for the soul purpose of heckling the people obviously listening in on his phone calls - and shouted about the kind of choice language that people within the company should write to avoid incrimination in lawsuits, particularly this one.

Smart, crazy man.

But, it's pretty obvious by this time that since the company listened in on this particular conversation, that this lawyer is in fact doing his best to win the lawsuit for their clients. Well, that would ruin their reputation and they would lose too much money, so they decide to go ahead and kill the annoying flies that pester them.

So, you go to all that trouble to make sure Arthur dies in a suicide, and yet you sloppily attempt to kill George Clooney with a car bomb? Not only did it fail but, as I said above, cars just don't blow up! It would be rather obvious that someone rigged it to blow and since Clooney just cleared himself of his debtors...who else would want to kill him? Man, this company is not very subtle.

At any rate, it is still a decent movie. Not especially thought-provoking since the basic premise of man overcoming evil business has been done before. I kinda wish they had gone more into the nature aspect of the movie, where a business obviously ignored laws and inflicted harm not only on the environment but on human life. But the whole violation of nature and its destruction was more of an irrelevant detail than anything significant and the movie was focused far more on how evil businesses will do personal harm in their eagerness to escape prosecution and lawsuits.

Even so, I still prefer V for Vendetta. Bundles a nice package of food for thought with incredible imagery and plenty of action.