Micheal Clayton - an attempt at a review.

I recently saw the movie Micheal Clayton and figured I'd write down my feelings/reactions to it.

To start off with, I loved the movie. It was definitely worthy of it's 7 oscar nominations. What I liked about the movie was that it didn't try to be a movie that preached to you. It lay the story out (one that has been played quiet a bit, I might add), through wonderful direction and acting (and everything that comes in between) and then let you take away what you wanted from it.

The characters were built to perfection - the main protagonist, Michael Clayton was displayed as being a lawyer at a high end NYC firm, one who should have had everything, but didn't. He was divorced, had a failed restaurant business, was broke and to top it off, was a very low profile (but important) member of his firm. They didn't try to make him into something he wasn't - a hero.

Arthur too, was very impressively written - the firms leading attorney in one of their biggest cases who has just suffered a mental breakdown (this is where the movie picks up) and hence, has just realized how unfruitfully he's been leading his life for the past decade - trying to defend a firm which was the cause of death of ~500 people. His soliloquy at the start of the film as well as when Michael sits down with him in the jail are some of the best parts of the movie.

Finally, Caren Crowder - the Chief counsel at the firm Arthur is defending was very well built and played too (in fact Tilda Swinton won as Oscar for her performance) - a soft-spoken, speaking in front of the mirror in the morning kind of a lady who knew what she wanted and went about it.

There aren't any specific moments in the film I can point to that stand out - but the feel of the overall film was such that you had a smile on your face when it ended. You felt like you could relate with the person and his actions, you felt like what he did, even though legally wrong was morally correct.

It was one of those movies that you could sit back and enjoy, and even though there is a scary message that resonates from it, there is also one that you can take some amount of comfort in - that there still are people who do the right thing; maybe not at the precise moment they should, but nevertheless, they end up doing the right thing.

Now don't get me wrong, the lawyer in me (so sometimes I think like a lawyer even if I ain't - so sue me) says that he should have been disbarred - lawyer client confidentiality is tantamount to the judicial system, I still ended up cheering for him.

I'm not sure if I've been able to put down my thoughts verbatim here (not reading books can do that to you), but I hope I've been able to explain my reasons for liking the film.