torsdag, juni 10, 2010

Michael Clayton


Michael Clayton is the name of the film and the main character (George Clooney) who works as a sort of "wheeler-dealer" at a law firm, where he earlier worked as an attorney.
He arranges so that the traces of 'bad behaviour' from clients they work with, disappears.

In this case the film opens with Clayton leaving a poker game wanting to take his car home. Later on - though he's not in it - it explodes. Obviously someone wants to kill him.
He is also in debt to a loan shark to cover his brother's depts, a brother having severe problems with alcohol in the same way as Clayton having problems with his gambling, leaving him almost broke.

Flashback four days earlier when the company is struck by a 'scandal' when one of their foremost lawyers, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), during negotiations concerning a pesticide case, strips himself naked and bursts out in anger, also having a manic-depressive problem, now being in his manic phase.
However, the grounds for his anger is justified.
Edens is put to defend a company's use of pesticides, a usage having caused serious problems for many people around the industrial plant.
He is now fed up with this and during his manic phase his aggressions towards the company, himself and the law firm, stir up strong emotions, not least since he has a good relation with a woman willing to testify against the company in question.
Clayton is ordained to deal with his colleague Arthur, a person he very much likes and admires.
Before Edens have the time to put forward the documents he has gathered, pointing at the negligence from the companies side, causing this catastrophy, he is found dead.
We as spectators know that he is killed but Clayton and the others doesn't know that - yet.
The day Clayton's car blows up, he starts to wonder who is behind the attempt to kill him and if this person also killed Edens.
As he is regarded being dead, he sees a opportunity to act.

This film was well produced, the acting is good and even though it's some violence in the film, it's more the chill from the person behind all this - Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) - that makes the spectator upset, I guess.
The film asks questions about the moral - or rather lack of moral - within multinational companies crossing corpse to reach their goals; about the individual responsibility in every major organisation and how to deal with etc.
These questions are by no means new but always relevant, not only the last few years during the economical so called crisis and its origins.

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