Corporate lawyers are not the most loved of species and Tony Gilroy's first film as director doesn't do them any favours. They are presented as skilful vultures protecting the rich from those whom they've exploited - and it isn't at all surprising that George Clooney's Michael Clayton, a man with a previously well-buried conscience who is "janitor" for a successful firm, begins to question his way of life.
Called to a rich client who wants to get off a charge of mowing down a pedestrian, he goes to the accident spot, gets out of his car to look at some peaceful horses in a verdant field and thus escapes death: a bomb had been placed in his vehicle. If he wants to get out, someone else obviously wants him to leave in a hurry, too.
Meanwhile, his company, headed by Sydney Pollack's philosophical chief, has to defend an agro-chemical company being sued for negligence and the firm's chief lawyer (Tom Wilkinson) has had a breakdown. This is partially because he is in love with one of the chemical company's victims (Merritt Wever) but also because he hasn't been taking his medicine for depression. Fixer Clayton has to attempt to clear up the mess.
A gambling addict with an unsuccessful marriage and a failed restaurant on his neck, Clayton ponders the wreck of his life while avoiding the murderous attentions of the chemical company's chief counsel (Tilda Swinton). He is not in the happiest of situations but soldiers on with a new determination to do something moral for a change.
Gilroy, who wrote the Bourne series and has written this, can't resist moving backwards and forwards in time, and belabours us with a series of smart but sometimes obfuscating editing decisions which may cause the viewer some confusion. But he has still made an excellent thriller and secured stand-out performances from his cast.
Clooney has seldom been better as Clayton, a man beginning to feel that his skill is not exactly being put to good uses, while Wilkinson, as the attack-dog lawyer now convinced he's wasting his talent and collapsing under the strain, is as good as ever.
But it is Swinton, as the nervy chief counsel for the chemical company, who trumps them both. To see her faced by Clayton with the enormity of her position is to see a great actress at work in a film that's good enough to keep her at full stretch.
Michael Clayton
Cert: 15
