MICHAEL CLAYTON: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 2007) Warner Home Video

Difficult to assess what Academy voters were thinking when they Oscar-nominated Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton (2007) as Best Picture. A more pedestrian would-be thriller, without so much as an ounce of originality, has not been made by Hollywood in quite some time. And the movie stars George Clooney, for whom I have a natural disdain, as the actor’s presence always seems to outrank his ability to play ‘a character’.  But the screenplay, also written by Gilroy, is just another run-of-the-mill 'corrupt corporation vs. the law' melodrama, in which Clooney’s eponymous, and, self-professed legal ‘janitor’ is assigned to clean up bureaucratic messes as they occur. At the time of its release, the critics were absolutely ‘fall down drunk’ with praise for the picture, particularly Tom Wilkinson’s bi-polar litigation partner, Arthur Edens, and the androgynous turn from Tilda Swinton as Karen Crowder, a mercenary in the court room who is also on the cusp of her own mental meltdown. Despite all its hype and praise, I never have been able to get my knickers in a ball for Michael Clayton – the movie, not the man – the picture, lumbering along at a snail’s pace with few moments that elevate even the acting above a sort of flat-lined monotone.

Relegated as a legal hack, Michael’s personal life is also something of a mess. Divorced with a son, and, bankrupted by a failed attempt at a bar and restaurant, Michael’s running on empty. His one redemptive quality is he is an honest man who truly believes in his friend, Arthur Edens. That friendship is put to the test after Arthur suddenly implodes from the neck up in the middle of contract negotiations on a 15-year lawsuit with 450 litigants depending on his verve to see them through. Arthur begins spouting diatribes and platitudes during his deposition, then, gets naked, follows the plaintiffs and their attorney into the parking lot. Thankfully, we only get to see Wilkinson’s top-half sans shirt. Not to sound petty, but the actor’s talents lay elsewhere. Michael’s boss, Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack) attempts damage control after the incident by sending Michael to straighten out the wrinkles with barracuda lawyer, Karen Crowder. Unimpressed by Michael’s glib attitude toward the whole debacle, Karen decides to take matters into her own hands. She hires a pair of high-priced techno-thugs, Mr. Verne (Robert Prescott) and Mr. Iker (Terry Serpico) to do a frame-up/suicide/murder after Arthur informs everyone by phone he has secret access to an action memorandum from their client, clearly to reveal the corporation had implicit knowledge that their ‘undisclosed farm product’ possessed all the harmful fallout of a known carcinogen.

The story is told in flashback, with a foiled car bomb attempt on Michael’s life leading to a series of regressive memories. These trigger the rest of the narrative to unravel. Working from his own script, director, Gilroy makes the least from all these suspense-less elements. Evidently attempting to pull a Pulp Fiction of sorts out of this creative bungle, the first 15-minutes are flashed across the screen as a series of confusing snippets, wholly taken out of context from the rest of the story. The audience only gains insight into their relevancy during the last 15-minutes of the film’s run time. Aside: I am generally averse to this kind of story-telling – the mystery, to be derived by the uber-cleverness of chop-shop editing, that renders the straight-forward and generally mundane, into something more confusing and convoluted than it actually ought to be. Once Gilroy has played his last hand, we are left wondering what all the fuss was about. It’s not so much a ‘big reveal’ as a ‘big, bloated tease’ – the entire plot, in service to events deliberately obfuscated to keep the audience in the dark. Part of the thrill in any thriller are derived from having the audience at least one jump ahead of the central characters in the story – thus, ensuring all our needless nail-biting – as in ‘don’t go in there’ quality – to ensue, leaving everyone on the edge of their theater seats. Michael Clayton is void of such tension.

As example; Arthur’s murder occurs quite suddenly and out of nowhere without any build up or even purpose. After all, why kill him when the whole world thinks he is nuttier than a fruitcake? Quite inexplicably, the center of Gilroy’s narrative transgresses into an exculpatory and pointless glimmer of the facts, with an overshadowing from Michael’s past - his extended family, and, the very brief kicker of a girl (Katherine Waterston) who was to have been Arthur’s star witness before he met with his untimely end. The girl contains no real evidence to pass along, although her very appearance seems enough to get Michael thinking about his friend’s staged death. Clooney is as Clooney does; never quite assimilating into the role, but adding himself into this repertory company as a Clooney-esque stick figure with no soul. Ditto for Pollack, whose forte is clearly directing – not acting! Wilkinson steals ever scene he is in, although as an actor this is not his finest hour either. Swinton has precious little to do, except appear chronically/ emotionally disheveled, tomboyish and gawky. She does this rather well – enough to win her a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, for which, undeserving, and seemingly to revel in the instant rush of faux fame, she thanked the press backstage by glibly referring to them as ‘assholes.’ What a class act!  In the final analysis, Michael Clayton is unworthy of its Best Picture nomination. True, 2007 was hardly a year populated by inspired cinema – but on the whole there is nothing extraordinary about this film. Period!

Warner Home Video’s hit-or-miss quality where Blu-ray transfers are concerned is decidedly a miss here: dull, soft and hazy. A few scenes support adequate colors with accurately rendered flesh tones. But on the whole, this looks about as competently rendered as a VHS transferred to DVD without any remastering applied.  Given, Rover Elswit’s cinematography is not of the eye-popping variety. But even monotone, this one ought to have looked more refined. Contrast levels are anemic in the extreme. There are no true blacks, but varying tonal grays. Warner hasn’t even spent the extra coin on a lossless DTS track. Instead, what’s here is Dolby Digital 5.1. Primarily a dialogue-driven movie, it’s James Newton Howard Oscar-nominated score here that sounds quite effective.  But dialogue sounds intentionally weak, as though the volume has been turned down to deliberate ear-straining levels, and making the adjustments on one’s sound system, simply adds reverb, instead of ambiance. Extras are limited to a junket produced at the time the movie was being made. A colossally disappointing movie in an even less than attractive hi-def offering. Pass and do not even give either the picture or this disc a second thought.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

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VIDEO/AUDIO

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EXTRAS

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