Michael Clayton

I watched Michael Clayton a while ago. It's got one of my man crushes George Clooney in it. Overall I really liked a lot of things about this movie, but I really felt it could have been executed better. Clooney plays (wait for it...) Michael Clayton, he's a guy that works at a prestigious law firm who has the role of the "fixer". He's the guy that can make problems go away because of who he knows and what he knows. It's also a movie about the lengths large corporations will go to in order to protect their image. As far as the story and the plot, I loved this movie. The execution left a little to be desired though. Even though we get hints that Clooney is a fixer, and it's heavily implied in a scene at the start of the movie, we never see him really "fix" anything. Aside from that minor detail I liked the rest of the movie (except for the very end). It's a flashback story though where they start out in the present and then spend the entire movie in a flashback getting back to the initial scene. After having watched the whole movie I definitely see why they did it that way, but for most of the movie you're left wondering what that technique brought to the story telling. The only other thing I wasn't that fond of was the ending. And I'm not even talking about the uncomfortably long scene at the end, but rather the movie's resolution. And I don't really want to say too much about what I didn't like for fear of spoiling the movie for those that haven't watched it yet. All in all it's a nice view into the amount of pressure corporations are willing to use in order to protect their self interests.