Michael Clayton

B

Directed by Tony Gilroy

Tony Gilroy's "Michael Clayton" is a satisfying if not completely groundbreaking thriller that skillfully explores the corrosive effects corporate greed.

Michael Clayton is the bag man for a large and powerful New York firm which is currently representing U-North, an agro-products multinational embroiled in a class aciton lawsuit having to do with one of its products that allegedly causes cancer. When the senior litigator at Clayton's firms suddenly goes off the rails and threatens to reveal incriminating details about the case, Clayton is sent in to "fix" the problem, only to find himself in a deadly game with U-North's henchmen who desperately want to silence anything that may incriminate them.

The revelation that large multinational law firms work hard to bury facts, draw out legal procedures, and generally work as long as possible to extract maximum billables from their corporate clients is nothing really shocking which probably makes the whole premise of "Michael Clayton" even more sobering. Indeed the parasitic relationship between multinational law firms and multinational corporations is pretty much common knowledge to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the legal world. "Michael Clayton" certainly paints a rather cynical view of both BIGLAW firms and the companies they service, but then again the cynicism seems well founded.

Beyond that, however, "Michael Clayton" stretches the truth a great deal. I doubt the "bag men" of major law firms are called on to patch things up on the fly when a big client is involved in a hit and run or likewise that multinational corporations keep hitmen on their payroll. However much it strays from realitiy, however, there remains a kernal of truth in "Michael Clayton" that keeps Gilroy's film from becoming nothing more than another thriller with an evil law firm at its center. Gilroy's film is most astute in how it shows ordinary people being completely swallowed in the gears of a mamoth entity as well as how decisions that are sent down the chain of coporate command can have ugly and very grave consequences on the lives of ordinary people. "Michael Clayton" doesn't hit on these issues as relentlessly and with the same single minded focus as a film like "Harlan County U.S.A" but it doesn't overreach either and become a pseudo-intellectual mess like "The Corporation." "Michael Clayton" is, of course, a work of fiction so it probably shouldn't be held to the same standards as a documentary but it is still an incisive film that looks to provoke debate rather than simply pointing fingers.