George Michael Clooney Clayton

For the first time in the short history of this blog, Statler and Waldorf actually watched the same movie! I was fortunate enough to enjoy Michael Clayton along with my lovely wife and her mother just last week. This movie not only kept my mother-in-law awake for the entire two hours, it also left her excited about showing it to her husband.

I will agree with you Matthew that George Clooney was just OK as the title character. I don’t know that I would say that I prefer him in any particular genre or character. I do know that he was the worst Batman of the group (yes, which means you did not finish last Val Kilmer). With his tiny head, George’s Batman looked more like Bettlejuice (post head shrinking) than the Caped Crusader.

The one area of this movie that still has me scratching my head is the climatic scene where Michael’s car is bombed.

Just to paint a quick picture, Michael goes over to a guy’s house on the request of his boss Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack) to provide low cost legal assistance to a guy who hit a homeless man on his way home from work. After talking with the “perp,” Michael goes driving in the woods and is followed by the minions Matthew referred to who are going to set off a bomb they planted in Michael’s car.

Now, this for some reason had to be done in the goofy Hollywood style that is suddenly in vogue whereby you tell an incomplete story in the present and then you go back to replay the past and thus explain the present which is now much like the future. This style reminds me of the great quote “I have seen the future - it looks a lot like the present, only longer.”

So, in the present, as we find out in the future, as represented by the past, Michael is driving in the woods and he starts making sudden turns and going faster and pulling off the main road onto side roads in what appears to be an attempt to avoid the minions. However, the story never represents that Michael either knew that he might be followed or provided cinematic proof that he saw the minions actually following him.

As Michael is driving around in the woods the minions who are trying to set off the bomb they planted in his car are trying to follow him with their tracking and detonating device which is not working properly. And, as every minion with an easily escapable, overly intricate, hidden bomb killing plan knows, you have to think safety first when detonating the device. Instead of just blowing the thing up when they planted it, or when he was driving on the freeway, or when he was driving in front of them in the woods (or even when he was passing them in the woods) they had to wait until just the right moment when he was safely away from any passing vehicles, children’s t-ball games or endangered species nesting grounds. And, as you may have guessed they did not kill Michael with their detonation.

The reason that the bomb did not kill Michael, besides the usual minion ineptitude, was because for some unknown reason Michael pulled his car over to the side of the road, walked up a woodsy hill to look at some horses and missed the detonation of the car bomb. With a surprised, yet puzzled look on his face (the product of George Clooney’s years of good acting experience), Michael walked down to the burning car and threw his cell phone and watch into the blaze. For the amateur criminal this may seem like a good idea, but let’s take a second to think about this. When the Police arrive at this scene they will find no body but they will find a slightly burned watch and a slightly burned cell phone. Don’t you think that eventually someone will say to themselves “how did the body blow and then burn into zero findable parts yet the watch and cellular telephone were barely damaged?” Come on people, has Michael Baden taught us nothing?

The point of the past few paragraphs is why did Michael Clayton get out of the car when he did? If he thought he was being set up and his car was going to be bombed why wouldn’t he just ditch the car much earlier? And don’t tell me he needed to make it look like the car bomb plan worked so he would no longer be hunted by the minions. This is only a good plan if you know the exact time the bomb is going to go off. Much like the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club, the first rule of the old “have the car blow up while I’m looking at horses in the woods” plan is you do not get blown up. Personally, if I thought there was a bomb in my car I would not be waiting around to find the perfect time and location to leave the car.

One more thought on that car bomb situation. If Michael was tipped off to the possible detonation by something that was said on the telephone between the aforementioned “perp” and Marty Bach, wouldn’t that implicate Marty Bach? If so, doesn’t the movie end in a manner which seems to indicate that Marty was not involved? And if you can say that Marty Bach had nothing to do with the situation, what tips Michael off to the minions tailing him or the possibility that he is in a car with a bomb packed inside the GPS? Either way, there is a hole in that bucket (Dear Liza).

I thought that Tom Wilkinson was great in this movie as Arthur Edens. Tom has played a lot of good characters lately. I thought his portrayal of Ben Franklin in the John Adams mini-series was very interesting and made me question my own perceptions of Franklin. But, it should also be noted that he once portrayed General Cornwallis in the movie The Patriot. If this guy shows up as Lieutenant General Rochambeau in a future movie I will be thoroughly impressed!

Finally, Danny Noonan was also in this movie. I don't care how tough a character Michael O'Keefe portrays, I will always see him as Danny (or Darryl Palmer from The Slugger's Wife).

So, to sum this one up, don’t forget to stop and smell the horses. It may just save your life!

Warren