Michael Clayton

In the face of Clooney's convincing warrior expression and Howard's emotional tones, I may feel guilty with my assessment, but any saving idea, warning finger, or suffocating statement drowns in the inarticulate and yet unnecessarily entangled boredom, which minute by minute increasingly flows towards an unsurprising conclusion. (21/08/2008)

Cold, distant, and unforgiving. Tony Gilroy is a very wise man who has managed to make his name a trademark, under which he is going to distribute goods of the best quality. You’ll be so chilled by Tom Wilkinson's opening monologue alone that you won't melt until the closing credits. This high-level legal game with lives on the line knocks you out with its formal austerity, which gives ample room for narrative peripeteia and theatrics in which the venerable academy has once again crowned the wrong person. Tilda Swinton spends the few minutes she gets looking like an uptight spinster, and immediately the golden statuettes come tumbling down. But otherwise, apart from the hasty introduction, I have no major complaints. 4 ½ (with the promise of a reunion coming soon). (29/03/2008)

A very intelligent and quite cold film that sticks so strongly to genre conventions to the point of being a problem, because a little more excitement wouldn't hurt. Despite Gilroy's attempt to ride the wave of reality, there are a few missteps, like for example, the dream “horse/bomb” scene – that could hardly happen in real life. But this is still a solid legal thriller, thanks to its visually simple and austere execution, with plenty of brilliant dialogues and experienced actors who play strong and captivating businessmen to perfection. Clooney in his mentally toughest role yet, he has forsaken his charming façade, and as a tough negotiator, you believe in him down to the last detail. A high-quality genre film that may not entertain everyone, but is capable of smartly appealing to the audience. (02/08/2008)

Michael Clayton was a completely different movie than I originally expected. No lawsuits, no flashy crime story with a shocking final reveal, but a perfectly sober and precise drama with amazing performances. I'm not so much talking about George Clooney, who once again performs to his classically high standard and is more than convincing as a stubborn negotiator suspecting a great deception, but in particular about the deranged Tom Wilkinson and his tiresome monologues, and the lawyer Tilda Swinton, who perhaps still carries a piece of the evil queen from Narnia. And even though I was quite sceptical at first and the plot seemed far-fetched, the slowly unravelling story gradually drew me in and I really enjoyed the final part. Tony Gilroy has made a low-key but very subtle film that is one of the pillars of its genre... (29/08/2012)

Michael Clayton is another film that seems to come to us through time from a bygone era. I can imagine it being made by Sidney Pollack (great idea to cast him here, by the way) or his namesake Lumet sometime during the seventies, preferably with Robert Redford or Gene Hackman in the lead. But back to the present. What we have here is a simple story that has been seen, read and heard several times, but it is well written, has excellent dialogue and such unique characters that it is a joy to watch. Tony Gilroy's direction is fairly slow (Michael Clayton is thankfully not an action movie), but he comes up with a lot of ideas and many of the scenes (the horses, Arthur's apartment, the cab ride) are memorable. There's also a subtle but atmospheric performance by James Newton Howard... Four and a half. (10/12/2011)