Michael Clayton **** (2007, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Michael O’Keefe, Sydney Pollack, Ken Howard) – Classic Movie Review 5,668

Tony Gilroy’s 2007 paranoia legal thriller Michael Clayton is intelligent, complex, engrossing and thrilling. George Clooney is ideal as a high-priced New York City law firm’s fixer. Tilda Swinton won an Oscar and Tom Wilkinson was nominated.

George Clooney stars as attorney Michael Clayton, a high-priced New York City law firm’s fixer, brought in to clean up after a one of the firm’s top litigators has apparent mental breakdown while representing a guilty chemical company in a zillion-dollar class action suit over the effects of toxic agrochemicals.

The law firm’s major client, U-North, is an agricultural products conglomerate that is being sued in a six-year-long lawsuit, is involved in a web of corruption and intrigue.

Writer/ director Tony Gilroy’s 2007 paranoia legal thriller Michael Clayton is intelligent, complex, engrossing and thrilling. It is a class act piece of work, very much in the style of an upmarket John Grisham novel. It is all about the script and the performances. And they are special, borderline great.

Clooney is ideal, carrying the picture in a subtle performance, but it is Tilda Swinton who steals the movie in a Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winning and Bafta-winning turn as the scheming Karen Crowder, U-North’s general counsel. She is on commanding form.

Sydney Pollack produces as well as acts as Michael’s boss, Marty Bach. Tom Wilkinson is also notable in an Oscar nominated Best Supporting Actor turn as Arthur Edens, the litigator having the breakdown, who has a manic episode in the middle of a deposition in Milwaukee. Michael O’Keefe plays Marty’s associate Barry Grissom, and Ken Howard plays U-North’s CEO Don Jeffries.

Swinton won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and there were six other Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor for Clooney, and Best Supporting Actor for Wilkinson.

On a careful budget of $25,000,000, it did well, taking $49,000,000 in the US, with a total of $92.9 million worldwide.

Pollack directed a movie of a John Grisham novel, The Firm (1993), with Tom Cruise.

The cast are George Clooney as Michael Clayton, Tom Wilkinson as Arthur Edens, Tilda Swinton as Karen Crowder, Sydney Pollack as Marty Bach, Michael O’Keefe as Barry Grissom, Sean Cullen as Gene Clayton, David Lansbury as Timmy Clayton, Ken Howard as Don Jeffries, Merritt Wever as Anna, Austin Williams as Henry Clayton, Denis O’Hare as Mr Greer, Julie White as Mrs Greer, Bill Raymond as Gabe Zabel, Robert Prescott as Verne, and Terry Serpico as Iker.

Tom Wilkinson died suddenly at his home on 30 December 2023, at the age of 75.

Tom Wilkinson OBE (5 February 1948 – 30 December 2023) received many awards, including a BAFTA Award for The Full Monty, a Golden Globe and a Primetime Emmy Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, one for Best Actor for In the Bedroom (2001) and the other for Best Supporting Actor for Michael Clayton (2007).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,668

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