The Pitch:
George Clooney at his most Oscar-hungry.
When did George Clooney's Oscar hunt begin?
Obviously, his double-whammy of Good Ngiht and Good Luck. and Syriana
(the latter winning him his first Oscar - Supporting Actor) in 2005 was his
first taste of Oscar glory. He spent a number of years before that working with
highly respected directors like Steven Soderbergh, the Coens, and Terence
Malick. Surely, he could've been angling for Oscars then. Or maybe the 2005
success gave him a taste for the Oscars. He certainly spent the next few years
hunting down a Lead Actor trophy. Winning as a producer for Argo seems
to have sated him though, as he hasn't been nominated since. Frankly, other
than Gravity the next year, it's doesn't even seem like he's trying that
hard for a nomination right now. Of course, that could just be hindsight
talking. The Monuments Men (director, actor), Hail, Caesar!
(actor), Money Monster (actor), and Suburbicon (director) all on
paper looked like Oscar players before people actually saw them.
Michael Clayton comes out when Geroge Clooney has perhaps the most Oscar
flop-sweat that he ever had though. It's the first role (sequentially, not when
I actually saw them) where I really thought "this man wants [another]
Oscar". And it's a fine role. Clooney is great at playing guys who control
a room. He doesn't have conversations. He tells you something and you listen,
even if it doesn't seem like it at the time. He's just fine in this. However,
he wasn't giving Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood) a run for his
money that year.
The supporting players make this interesting. Tom
Wilkinson is always a little weirder than he lets on. I see him and think I'm about
to get a stuffy British actor. Then I look about his assorted roles - a lawyer
who strips off his clothes during a deposition in Michael Clayton, the
relative straight man in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a mob
boss in a Batman movie - and realize that he has more fun than I expect. It's
somewhat hilarious that Tilda Swinton won her only Oscar (so far) for this
buttoned down role. I know she can play "normal" really well, but it
seems like someone with such a reputation for strange, risky roles would have
an Oscar for something more daring than this. Then again. it fits the Oscars
to award someone for their safest role.
You'll notice that I'm talking around the movie
itself. That's because it didn't make much of an impression on me. It's a slightly
above-average, polished corporate thriller. At different points, I can't tell
if I lost track of or lost interest in the plot. There are some good
performances, what I'm assuming is a well thought-out script, and not much else
that I can remember.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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