To the cinema today for to see Mr Clooney's latest oeuvre in the medium of motion picture, Michael Clayton. And very good it is too. A thriller that doesn't so much thrill as creep up behind you and tap you on the shoulder, then duck out of view when you look round. In between taps it carries your attention by the sheer quality of performance - George, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton. The final scene, a long unbroken take of Mr Clooney's finely chiselled features, will (a) please his legions of adoring female fans who would pay to watch him read a shopping list and (b) put the rest of us in mind of Bob Hoskins's final drive of shame in The Long Good Friday. But seen from the other side. As it were. No idea what I'm talking about, have you?
No fast-cut incomprehensible action scenes, no car chases, no screeching music. There is one brief moment of clinical violence, all the more unpleasant for its sheer professionalism; most of the driving is simply to get from A to B as people must; and the music is muted Japanese-synthy-wind-chimy tones. And unlike all those movies where the bad guys have armies of morally vacuumed-out hitmen to order, here the baddie barely knows what she's getting into when she calls in some freelance assistance.
Highly recommended.
sounds good! right, time to follow standard procedure for when you reccommend a film to me:
ReplyDelete1) forget about the film.
2) watch it three months later by accident.
3) go off ranting about how it's the best thing since memento.