By Curt Schleier

MICHAEL CLAYTON is a morality play about a person ultimately driven to do the right thing – against his own better interests.  And it is a story about how venal corporate America and its lawyers can be.  But most of all, it is a suspenseful yarn that will get your pulse racing and hold you in its throes almost from the beginning until the end.

Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house fixer for an upper crust law firm.  If a client gets in trouble, his job is to clean up the mess, whatever it is.  But it wasn’t always that way.  Clayton, who comes from a family of cops, was a promising trial lawyer for the district attorney and a special crime task force before succumbing to the lure of private practice.

One reason he switched careers: he had a gambling problem.  Supposedly he licked it, but now Clayton is in debt again because a restaurant he opened with his drug-addicted brother went down the tubes.  And the people he owes money to are the kind of people who will repossess your bones if payment isn’t prompt.

We don’t know this in the beginning of course.  At the start, all we here is the voice of what appears to be someone discombobulated talking to Clayton, apologizing for running around naked in a parking lot.  Meanwhile, the camera is focused on a bunch of people working in a large conference room.  It’s the middle of the night and they’re finalizing a settlement of a major lawsuit.  Someone asks “where is Karen?”  And we see a woman in the restroom sweating through her blouse.

The scene shifts to a gambling den in Chinatown where Clayton’s game is interrupted by a phone call.  A top client is in trouble; he was involved in a hit and run.  Clayton travels to the driver’s home in a ritzy and bucolic New York City suburb, where he is met with skepticism.  “I’m not a miracle worker,” Clayton explains. “I’m a janitor.”


On his way home, Clayton steps out of the car to admire the local scenery when the car explodes behind him.  It doesn’t make sense.    None of it.  Whose voice was that on the phone?  What was the case they were settling?  And who is that women who was sweating?

It all becomes clear when the story shifts to four days earlier.  The senior litigating partner in the firm, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) has gone off the deep end – and apparently his medication.  He is a manic-depressive and for a reason sane people can’t understand he decides to get undressed at a deposition and declare his love for a plaintiff.   It is a major law suit for a large client, U/North, a chemical company being sued because its fertilizer was a carcinogen. 

Clayton thinks the problem is easily solvable: Edens’ wife recently passed away and he has a poor relationship with his only child.  He went off his medication, and must be convinced to go back on it.  Simple.

But that turns out to be the least of the problems.  Edens has discovered a document indicating that U/North’s CEO knew of the potential lethal effects of the fertilizer and signed off on it any way.  The lawyer is going to public with it ruining the company and the law firm.

Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), the Karen the lawyers were looking for in the opening sequence, is the newly named general counsel for the firm, and she will do anything to keep the document from leaking out.  She finds her own fixers, who tap phones, plant car bombs and even murder people.

The head of the law firm, Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack) has a vested interest in keeping the document secret.  If things go south the client won’t pay the $9 million it owes the firm.  It will also ruin the chances for a merger he’s been negotiating that will leave him with enough cash to retire for seven lifetimes.

There is one significant plot hole.  I wonder why Clayton would invest his life’s savings in a project with a druggie brother.  There’s also a story line about Clayton’s son and a fantasy book, Relm + Conquest, that seems a distraction more than a help.


Still the film moves forward at breakneck speed creating an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia and dread.  In large measure, the credit goes to the actors.  Clooney is in his normally excellent form; he seems to have perfect pitch when it comes to picking roles.

But the real standouts are Wilkinson (IN THE BEDROOM, NORMAL) and Swinton (THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, ORLANDO).  Both portray their anguish expressively and convincingly – he trying to persuade Clayton that it’s not the illness talking and she forced into a place where she has to do things she doesn’t really want to.  I almost felt sympathy for her, even as she set murderers loose.

The Academy tends not to reward excellent performances in suspense films – unless an actor puts on a prosthetic nose or phony accent.  But Wilkinson and Swinton have my vote locked in.  Or they would if I had a vote.