"The truth can be adjusted," and what a price we all pay for it.
This is one of the best movies I've ever seen - in all respects ... acting, script, music, story, message.
Clooney is Oscar-caliber here ... a distracted father, a gambling addict, in debt to the mob for a failed restaurant, a "janitor" for a world-renown law firm. It's his job to clean up the mess, and no one can do it quite like Michael Clayton.
His good friend and fellow-attorney, one of the best and most ruthless, defending a huge agricultural conglomerate in a case against a product the company knows to be toxic, suddenly does the bizarre - in a hearing, he takes off his clothing and walks out of the room naked, declaring his love for one of the plaintiffs. Time for the janitor!
The story deepens and twists a thousands different ways ... the far-reaching influence of the powerful, the ruthless ambition of corporate heads, the dismissal of truth for profits, the do-anything mode of thought to survive, the simmering conscience that erupts in the strangest of ways, the remnants of compassion and decency lingering in our soul, and the enduring quality of truth.
A part of the Clooney-Soderbergh ouevre, along with The Good German (2006), Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck (2005), and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), Michael Clayton explores the inner-workings of power, and the often tangled web of money and influence that takes governments and corporations, their leaders and their employees, down terrible paths.
Rated R - a tough and demanding film that exposes the raw nerve of power, and lifts up the possibility of redemption. A must-see film!
