Michael
Clayton
You see, I’m pretty sure this movie started out as biopic about
the guy who wrote Jurassic Park, but then when Miss Potter bombed at the box office they figured author biopics
were dead and decided to make it about a guy with a similar name but a different
dilemma (not writing a book about dinosaurs).
The opening scene is of the title character (Mr. Michael Raymond
Clayton) driving back from the country after getting abused by some prick and
he pulls over to get out, climb a hill, and look at some (three) ponies. I’m sure when this started out as Michael
Crichton biopic, he pulled over to look at a triceratops, but in this version
it comes out as more of a Blade Runner
unicorn moment. Then Michael’s car
explodes and we see Michael start running but we can’t tell in which
direction. Then we get one of those big
bold letter messages on the screen telling us the film is about to jump to four
days earlier (but no accompanying visual of clock hands spinning backwards).
See kids, this is how you build an effective thriller. We’re left the rest of the movie wondering if
Michael is the type of guy to run towards or away from an exploding car. Edge of your seat stuff. The movie gives you several clues and red
herrings including various moments throughout the film when Michael runs
towards and away from objects of varying danger. The film takes you through the hard four days
leading up to that key moment when we find out if Michael is stupid enough to
run at a flaming ball of glass and metal or not. And you’ll be second guessing your first
guess throughout the whole film, unless you continue reading this, in which
case I’ll eventually tell you what he does.
This movie goes back from the car explosion moment to become one
of those occult/legal thrillers like Devil’s
Advocate. We get to know Michael,
who works for a big law firm but introduces himself as a janitor. The other movie I saw on the weekend was this
vigilante thriller called The Brave One,
in which low ranking detectives all wore tailored $3,000.00 suits. So I figured a janitor who dresses this
nicely wasn’t that much of a stretch.
Especially when he explains that his flashy Lexus is actually a company
car and he doesn’t own shit. In fact he
has debt problems. But back to the
occult stuff. It turns out one of the
big lawyers at his law firm has become possessed by Sheva the Goddess of
Death. This is pretty funny since it’s
Tom Wilkinson calling himself a Goddess and if it weren’t for the “of death” part it would sound kinda like
a lady’s shaver. This is obviously an
allusion to Ghostbusters when Rick
Moranis is a little dork being possessed by a big scary demon, but they’ve
flipped it nicely by making a sweaty chubby man “Sheva the Goddess”. Good job guys. I think there was also a good laugh in there
if he actually introduced himself as “Sheva
the Goddess of Death, attorney at law”.
Also, like how the aliens in Robert
Rodriguez’s The Faculty required insane amounts of water to remain
hydrated, Sheva the Goddess of Death requires copious amounts of
baguettes. I’m not sure if this was an
American snub at French culture a la famous “freedom fries” incident, but even
as just a straight up old fashioned demon pastry joke it was still pretty
funny.
Anyway, it turns out that Sheva the Goddess of Death was legally
representing a huge pesticide company but then had a crisis of conscience and
started planning to expose the company for poisoning all sorts of people. Sheva the Goddess of Death even had a little
booklet of proof printed up, unfortunately opting for spiral binding and a
demonic (!) red cardboard cover.
Part of Michael’s duties as a well-dressed janitor is to exorcise
Sheva so that he can go back to helping Tilda Swinton and her evil corporation
continue to poisoning people. But Tilda
takes things into her own hands and hires a “cleaner”. So at this point it becomes Cleaner Versus Janitor, which in my
opinion is a better title but probably too obviously Oscar bait. And we know this George Clooney guy is all
about subtlety. But does he run towards
or away from the exploding car? Always
there in the back of our minds.
Michael unravels a mystery of greed and corruption that leads all
the way to the corridors of power, through the corridors of power, past the
receptionist of power because it has a building pass of power and a trustworthy
look of power, up the escalator of power, into the waiting room of power, into
the antechamber of power, into the inner office of power, and then takes a
powernap under the desk of power like George Costanza did on the episode of
Seinfeld.
But Michael Clayton chooses the atrium of power for his final
confrontation against Tilda, who steps outside after giving a powerspeech in a
power suit in the conference room of power.
There’s a part where he starts barking at her “Do I look like I’m negotiating?!?!” and she makes a confused face
and just trembles. I mean fifty fifty
odds, I’d of hedged my bets and answered that he ‘kinda’ looks like he’s negotiating.
Plus, maybe it was a deleted scene, but we never see him negotiate. Maybe he puts on a fez when he negotiates and
that’s why it’s such an insulting rhetorical question when, without his
negotiation fez, he asks if he looks like he’s negotiating.
This movie was written and directed by Tony Gilroy, the guy who
wrote the Bourne movies, and you can
tell he’s fresh off the third one cuz he’s still got ultimatums on the brain,
but this movie is kinda short on supremacy and identity. And we all know Bourne wouldn’t stop to look
at ponies unless he was having a flashback to when the CIA forced him to fuck a
pony as part of his assassin initiation or something. And Bourne definitely wouldn’t run towards an
exploding car. There, I told you, just
like I told you I’d tell you if you kept reading.
Michael Clayton is in fact the type of douche who runs towards an
exploding car, but there’s a bit of a twist.
He runs up to the car and takes off his wristwatch and throws it inside
and then runs away to effectively fake his death. Since Michael Clayton’s brother is a cop,
he’s got the inside scoop and knows police don’t look for things like skeletons
to confirm death when they’ve got a wristwatch because those things are like
DNA. I know if I ever have to fake my
death I’ll draw a chalk outline on the curb and then climb on top of a nearby
building and chuck my watch into the outline.
I’m sure when this Tony Gilroy guy gets hired to remake Highlander (probably starring Matt
Damon) he’ll change the decapitations to just having to steal the other
immortal’s watches. There can be only
one……Rolex.
But for this inside knowledge about faking one’s own death,
Michael is strangely clueless about things such as wiretapping. Even Sheva the Goddess of Death seemed to be
confused by what amazing technological advancements made it possible for a
third party to know things he had said to somebody else over and open
phoneline. I’m not a Goddess of Jack
Shit and I can tell when somebody’s listening in on my calls. And a janitor like Michael should know about
this stuff too, it seems like it would be part of his duties even though with
his high school diploma and law degree he’s more of an exorcist like Keanu in
So this Michael Clayton
movie was kind enough to sit in for David
Fincher’s Zodiac last night at the Oscar Awards Show. I figured if this movie is good enough to
fill David Fincher’s Zodiac’s spot
in several categories, it’s good enough for me to analyze. Maybe I was right. If David
Fincher’s Zodiac asked me for advice, I would tell it not to miss the Oscars
from now on and that sending this type of movie in its place is
unprofessional. But for a janitor it did
pretty well.
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