Michael Clayton

I've just been to see Michael Clayton - I often find evening screenings a bit of a struggle and there's usually 5 minutes or so when I lose concentration completely, but not this time. I was thoroughly engrossed and wide-awake all the way through.
There's no-one better than George Clooney for portraying self-loathing, but you're always aware that underneath the world-weariness there burns a fierce intelligence. Tom Wilkinson was, as always, superb, as Clooney's colleague who flips, suddenly tearing off his clothes during a business meeting. Wilkinson can always be relied upon, and is particularly good at portraying frayed, damaged personalities.
I was less sure about Tilda Swinton; I was, and still am, in two minds about her. On one hand, her character was unconvincing - would someone as badly-groomed ever get near her position as counsel for a giant corporation? Surely she would be turned-out like a bandbox, and have perfect hair. I think she was probably supposed to be an emblem for the flakiness of the company, but she just wasn't smart enough. We saw her practising her lines and perfecting her appearance, but the result simply wasn't realistic on any level. And her accent wavered all over the place.
On the other hand, her slightly manic demeanour and nervy, brittle persona was highly watchable and made the film less conventional. Swinton has made a career out of taking risks and breaking convention, and can only be admired for having a go. I'm still not sure about British actors playing Americans. I like some of them very much, (Hugh Laurie in particular) but I don't want to be distracted by thinking how good/bad their accent is. I can think of too many examples of dodgy American accents, though, to be fair, there are far more examples of bad British accents by US actors.
Back to the film - you really had to put some effort into keeping track of what was going on in this film. A couple in front of us walked out halfway through - they probably thought 'Oh great, George Clooney', thinking it would be a kind of Ocean's 11, a piece of light entertainment, only to be asked to put some work in. I like a bit of mindless entertainment - who doesn't? But I also like to be asked to think. Certainly the first half-hour of this was tricky, and I found myself wondering at times what the hell was going on, but was rewarded with a knotty, gritty, well-worked film. Executive producers, I noticed, were Anthony Minghella, Steven Soderburgh and Sydney Pollack, as well as Clooney himself. Clooney seems to be very good at getting people on board to help him get good films made. It's clear that the Oceans films enable him to do this kind of stuff. One last thing - it's always good to see actors happy to display their grey hair and absence of botox. Clooney's ageing very well, as is Wilkinson - similarly unenhanced. Would that others were so confident in their acting ability.
Grey hair rules!!