Word: claytons
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...Michael Clayton (George Clooney) makes good money at Kenner, Bach and Ledeen, one of those vast Manhattan law factories, but he's never made partner. And is unlikely to do so. Partly that's a matter of class. He's a cop's son and the product of the Fordham Law school, not Yale or Harvard. Partly it's a matter of his legal - or should we say marginally illegal? - services to the firm. He is its smooth, cool fixer, the guy who cleans up the messes - hit-and-run driving cases, ugly divorces, immigration muddles - in which the firm...
...Michael Clayton, written and directed by Tony Gilroy (who wrote a couple of the Bourne movies), plays into a pretty common form of contemporary American paranoia. Everyone fears a legal letter from a firm like Kenner, Bach and Ledeen, which typically signifies lots of unpleasant prospects: that someone is willing to spend millions to go after you, that even if, eventually, you prevail, the cost of defending yourself will ruin you and that law firms and their big-time clients will not be entirely scrupulous in pursuing their case. Sure enough, murderous private detectives are soon deployed to protect U/North...
...developing its multi-layered plot, and, frankly, there are elements in it - notably something to do with a kid's book that Michael's son induces Arthur Edens to read - that seemed to me rather murky. Or incompletely developed. But there's still something deeply absorbing about Michael Clayton, which stems largely from the way it allows its characters their quirks. You believe Arthur's temporary insanity, which is a matter of decent instincts overriding his professionalism. You believe that Pollack's apparent toughness is something of a shell. You sense a curious (and not unsympathetic) naivety in Swinton...
...Michael Clayton is not an exercise in high-tension energy; you'll never confuse its eponymous protagonist with Jason Bourne. But it does have enough of a melodramatic pulse to keep you engaged in its story and, better than that, it is full of plausible characters who are capable of surprising - and surpassing - your expectations...
...heartthrob, but he's also a serious Darfur activist who knows what it's like to be different in high school. His latest movie, Michael Clayton, opens Oct. 12. George Clooney will now take your questions...