Michael Clayton (2007) - by Tyler & Ellen
¡Bienvenido de nuevo a ILTBTA! (Sorry, we just got back from a wedding in Mexico.) For this installment we watched Michael Clayton, a 2007 legal thriller starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, and Tilda Swinton. Were we able to resist George Clooney’s charm and focus on the actual movie? Grab a red-covered book and find out!
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: No plots, head empty. I may know more about George Clooney’s tequila than I do about this movie.
Tyler: I vaguely recall watching this movie with my parents down the shore like ten years ago, but I couldn’t tell you anything about the actual plot or what happens. I think at one point his car explodes as he’s walking through a cemetery? Or an open field? Maybe? I don’t know, let’s see if I’m even remembering the right movie.
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): A law firm brings in its "fixer" to remedy the situation after a lawyer has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multibillion-dollar class action suit.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
The conference rooms at Kenner, Bach, & Ledeen are abuzz with activity as hives of lawyers button up the last details of a settlement by agricultural conglomerate U-North in a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit and fend off calls from the Wall Street Journal about it. Michael Clayton isn’t picking up his Blackberry since he’s busy in a backroom poker game. On his way out, he gets a call to help another lawyer out on a hit-and-run case for a big client and drives out to the burbs to deal with the jerkface. After an argument about whether he’s a miracle worker fixer or a glorified janitor (Michael takes the latter stance), he drives off into the country. Just past dawn, he pulls over to the side of a misty hill and climbs up to see three horses when BOOM! His leased Mercedes explodes behind him.
Ellen: Most of these opening scenes include a voiceover of an impassioned voicemail from Arthur Edens (we’ll meet him soon!), which definitely piqued my interest even before a gosh dang car bomb!
Tyler: Michael’s Blackberry is such an unintentionally funny way to place the movie in a very specific time. Also, the “That’s the police isn’t it?” “No, they don’t call” interaction gave me a good chuckle.
Four days earlier, Michael’s son Henry is excitedly describing the plot of Realm & Conquest: Book 1, the red cover, despite the fact that his dad is barely listening and hasn’t even picked up his copy. The lawyer drops his son at school and drops in on a kitchen auction at Timmy’s, the failed bar of Michael and his brother, the titular Timmy (whose drug habit helped sink the business). The loan shark in a Neil-from-The Santa Clause sweater informs Michael he’ll be $75,000 short and has a week to pay up. Looks like it’s time for a montage of Michael on the phone with terrible clients looking for equally terrible solutions from the firm’s fixer. Meanwhile, a different lawyer, U-North’s Karen Crowder, is anxiously rehearsing interview response questions into the mirror. She’s new to the job, and you get the strong impression it’s all she has. Her painstaking interview is interrupted by something “urgent.”
That something urgent is a tape of Arthur Edens, the lawyer who’s been taking point on defending U-North, stripping down in a deposition room in Milwaukee, offering his clothing as penance to Anna, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Having been the one to pull Arthur back after the last time he stopped taking his medication, Michael flies to Wisconsin, bails him out, and attempts to smooth things over with Karen. The gang of lawyers is searching for Arthur’s briefcase but uh-oh! Karen has it. She discovers he has a copy of U-North Internal Memo #229, which is to say the smoking knowledge of carcinogenic weed killer. She’s put in touch with some… associates of the U-North CEO, and they begin to surveil Arthur. At present, he’s enamored by Henry’s description of Realm & Conquest on the phone, but soon he’ll be slipping out of the hotel without Michael’s knowledge and back to New York.
Ellen: Michael has to kick the door down to discover Arthur is gone, and maybe I’ve watched too many Marvel movies, but it was weirdly satisfying to me for a character to take many, many kicks in this effort.
In that great big apple of a city, Karen would like Marty (head of the firm) to explain his subordinate’s behavior, causing an office-wide search for U-North documents. Michael finds the time to ask Marty for an eighty-grand loan, the strings of which will be getting U-North and Arthur back on track. Michael is the best at the legal loopholes he finds, but it means he doesn’t get the money or prestige a lawyer of his age and talent ought to have. Anyway, Arthur is wandering Times Square in a daze, while unbeknownst to him, the black hat types have broken into his apartment and tapped his phone. They later hear him talking to Anna about how he can help her really do something about this. Michael spends his time with Henry driving in circles, hoping to find Arthur, and eventually he’s able to stop him and his armfull of baguettes in an alley. Arthur absolutely schools Michael on the possibility of involuntarily committing him, and seems most concerned about the fact that his phone is tapped (which Michael neither knows nor believes).
Karen, however, both knows and believes this is a big problem, especially after hearing a recording of Arthur reading the Memo aloud and providing blistering commentary. She yanks out her iPod Nano earbuds and tells the bad guys to take drastic action. They do so in the form of accosting Arthur outside his apartment, quietly incapacitating him, and dragging him back in. A lethal injection between the toes and some strategically placed pills complete the scene. Michael gets the call after leaving a family birthday party and a brief but awkward encounter with Timmy. Later, at Arthur’s wake, his coworkers are mourning his loss and puzzling over the lack of suicide note. Marty has the grace to be embarrassed by it, but he thinks the firm caught a lucky break with Arthur’s death, and U-North is going to settle.
Not satisfied by explanations of either suicide or accident, Michael calls Anna’s house, only to get her deeply annoyed sister instead, who informs him that Anna is in New York. He rushes to go find her at an airport motel and learns that Arthur paid for her first-class ticket and she never told anyone about their calls. Using his law enforcement connections (aka his other brother), Michael gets into Arthur’s apartment and discovers a heavily-highlit copy of Realm & Conquest and a receipt from a Copymat (as Jerry Macguire would call it). Unfortunately, our dear assassins have been following him, and they call the cops and Michael is arrested. Other Brother bails him out, and Michael proceeds to the copier to find that Arthur ordered 2,000 copies of the U-North memo with red covers. Karen finds out because she knows everything and decides Michael has to be eliminated as well. He gets his $80,000 check from Marty and pays the loan shark.
And we’ve come full circle! We now know while Michael was in the poker game, a bomb was being installed in his car, which explains why Karen was in a bathroom stall sweating Tilda break of dawn. As Michael is chasing horses, the assassins are chasing him. After the blast, he tosses his personal items into the car to make it look like it was successful and gets Timmy of all people to pick him up. Karen is now advising U-North to accept the terms of the settlement ($600 million, whereas the damages were for $3 billion). She sees the ghost of Michael Clayton in the hall, only to realize it’s the man himself! He goads her into offering him $10 million for his silence, and just when you think he might take it, NYPD busts in and arrests her and the U-North CEO. Mission accomplished, Michael gets into a cab and just rides.
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … Realm & Conquest!
Has the harsh light of day gotten you down, and you’re looking to escape into another world? Are you looking for a way to connect with your son, whom you only seem to see while you’re in a car? Or do you simply need a sick cover to use on the explosive internal memo of an agricultural conglomerate that you’re about to leak? Then pick up a copy of Realm & Conquest (the red one, your son is very specific about that).
Immerse yourself in a world of shared dreams, secret missions, and epic quests. Use promo code ILTBTA when buying this book online and receive a free copy of the infamous U-North memo!
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
Michael Clayton’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
Michael Clayton was Tony Gilroy’s directorial debut after writing for several movies since the 90s. His writing credits include Armageddon, the first four movies of the Bourne franchise, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He’s also the creator, developer, and showrunner for the upcoming “Andor” series on Disney+, which these authors are quite hyped for.
Potential bar trivia answer alert: George Clooney is one of only three people to have been nominated for Academy Awards in six different categories, along with Walt Disney and Alfonso Cuarόn, and second only to Kenneth Branagh (with seven).
In addition to being active in a variety of different humanitarian efforts over the years, George Clooney was also active in the Hollywood dating scene, with reported relationships with Kelly Preston, Talia Balsam, Ginger Lynn Allen, Cameron Diaz, Frances Fisher, Céline Balitran, Charlize Theron, Lucy Liu, Lisa Snowdon … (takes a big breath) Renée Zellweger, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Krista Allen, Linda Thompson, Sarah Larson, Elisabetta Canalis, Stacy Keibler, and FINALLY Amal Alamuddin, whom he married in 2014.
During his relationship with Kelly Preston, Clooney bought her a Vietnamese Pot-bellied pig (for reasons unknown) named Max. After they broke up he kept the pig for another eighteen years until Max died in 2006, with Clooney joking it was the longest relationship he’s ever had.
For her role as U-North Chief Counsel Karen Crowder, Tilda Swinton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, besting (amongst others) eventual Brooklyn star Saoirse Ronan and future Nightmare Alley star Cate Blanchett. In 2020, The New York Times ranked Swinton the 13th greatest actor of the 21st century.
Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.
It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role. And the nomnomnominees are:
One of Arthur’s baker’s dozen of baguettes
A drink at Arthur’s wake
A shot of George Clooney’s tequila
And the Oscar goes to … one of Arthur’s baguettes! Unfortunately, we drank the other nominees and needed something to sop up the alcohol, so we will accept this award on its behalf.
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to allow the Academy to partake in my bounty of baguettes as a lil’ treat. I liked this movie the more that I sat with it. Initially, the bummer of it all really overshadowed the really excellent filmmaking and performances. I think toward the end, you’re supposed to not be sure if Michael would take the bribe or not, but given the strength of his care for Arthur, I never doubted he was against Karen. My only doubt was as to if he’d take a lawful route! It’s not “fun,” really, but it sure is compelling. I really do want a nice baguette now though…
Tyler: I’d like to congratulate the fixer who got this movie nominated and send their information to the Academy. For a movie billed as a “legal thriller” (which can sometimes be an oxymoron) I found this to be surprisingly well-paced and straightforward enough for those of us who didn’t take the LSAT to follow. I also enjoyed the non-linear (circular?) narrative timeline, essentially starting the movie at the end then backing up to explain how he got there, and finally ending with the verbally explosive climactic conversation between Michael and Karen. That’s not to say I thought it was necessarily better than fellow nominees (and possible future ILTBTA subjects) No Country for Old Men and Atonement, but I’d say it’s solidly in the “good to great” category worthy of its nomination.
And in case anyone’s wondering, my parents enjoyed it the second time around as well.
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
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If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
Better find your passport ILTBTA readers, because for our next installment we’ll travel to early 20th century Britain for A Room with a View. This 1985 romantic drama stars Helena Bonham Carter as a young woman on vacation in Italy, Julian Sands as the free-spirited man she falls for, and Dame Maggie Smith as her accompanying cousin. A Room with a View is available to watch for free with an HBO Max or Showtime subscription, and available to rent basically everywhere else.
Until then, be the Michael Clayton of your field!
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