It is at this point that I call fraud on the newest cinematic necromanc-er, Michael Clayton, and ask him to get off the stage.

     I used to enjoy movies which started in flashback and then worked their way from that point to show us how the main character got to the point where we first find them. Unfortunately, ever since The Usual Suspects, every director which has come down the pike seems to think they have what it takes to fool an audience and tell such a story skillful-ly. Tony Gilroy, who wrote all of the Bourne movies and makes his direc-torial debut with Michael Clayton, is not in possession of such skills.

     When we first meet the titular hero, played by the likeable George Clooney, he's playing low-rent gin in a seedy New York den. He's also got financial trouble because his business venture with an irresponsible brother has failed and he has to auction off by piecemeal items from the bar they went in on together to pay off the debt. After a hard night, he gets a call from an attorney who begs him to go to Westchester to see a client of his, who's just fled the scene of a hit-and-run. After dealing with the arrogant felon-to-be, Michael stops along the way home to get out of his car and admire some horses in a nearby field. While getting in touch with nature, his car explodes, and Michael flees into the woods. Then begins the flashback...

     Four days earlier, Michael gets a call from his boss Marty Bach (sometimes director/sometimes actor Sydney Pollack), head of the powerful law firm where Michael works as a "fixer"--someone who goes in on a case and does cleanup work on a client before they speak to a lawyer, in order to assess what damage or spin control needs to be done before the lawyer actually tackles the case. I don't know if such people actually exist within the realms of the legal eagles, as Michael isn't actually a "spin doctor" per se, but this is unfortunately as close as you'll get to an actual definition of what Michael does. His job is never ever clearly defined within the film, nor--with the exception of the truncated scene with the hit-and-run driver--are we ever fully shown Michael doing what it is that he's supposedly "the best" at. Aside from his ne'er-do-well alcoholic/druggie brother leaving him in a bind, we are also never given any reason why Michael can't come up with eighty thousand dollars to pay off his debt, when it's brought up again and again how successful and powerful his firm is, and a person in his posi-tion should supposedly be swimming in cash on hand.

     This is the great flaw of Michael Clayton, the movie: it spends its time tangled up in legalese and spouting terms like "deposition", which Gilroy or anybody else could pick up by watching any of the Law and Order series and toss into a lawyer film without understanding what they really mean. The initial thrust of the film is that Michael tries to help senior partner Arthur Edens(the always reliable Tom Wilkinson) pull things together after he's snapped during a deposition meeting and stripped down to his birthday suit. Arthur's disturbed because of something he found out about U-North, a company whose main function is never clearly defined, but which we are supposed to assume has intentions as shadowy as Resident Evil's Umbrella Corp. Michael's law firm is repre-senting U-North in a class action suit brought about by several farmers who have developed cancer or lost friends/family to cancer following use of the company's soil, sewage and harvesting products. Michael's company is also involved in a merger with a British company, and of course if the multi-million dollar U-North suit goes south, so does Marty Bach's merger. It's up to Michael--lawyer man of mystery--to fix Arthur's mental state and make sure the ship sails on smoothly.

     As Michael becomes more aware of what made Arthur go bonkers though, it becomes clearer that everything at U-North isn't all bunnies and roses. Unfortunately, it takes a long time for this realization to come, as Michael Clayton initially focuses far too much on Arthur's condition, which while being key to the plot itself, is still something which should have been left as more of a "B-plot" device. More is revealed through Arthur's death than anything during the first forty or so minutes which the movie spends on allowing us to get to know who Arthur is. While it might seem to writer/director Gilroy that knowing Arthur was essential for us to feel sorrow when his death arrives, it's an unfortunate weakness of the script that we come to empathize more with him and find out more about him than we ever do about Michael Clayton the man--the alleged star of the film. Yes, Michael has a son that he spends time with but doesn't take the time to listen to or get to know. Yes, Michael had a small gambling habit and drinks a little bit more than he should(though there are no scenes of Clooney as a drunk, which might have given us more to identify with). Yes, Michael is a workaholic who spends next to no time with his family...but these aren't character traits, they are merely sketches of what a character might be, if the writer took more time to flesh him out. Beyond what we're shown, Michael Clayton the man is a cipher. The role could have been played by anyone, and the same nill effect would have been viewable.

     When the big revelation about what U-North has been up to finally arrives, it doesn't come as a surprise or a gasp inspiring shock to the heart as it should; it's yawn inducing. We've seen this type of develop-ment in more than a dozen movies dealing with the little guy trod upon by Big Industry and the righteous lawyer guy(or whatever the hell Michael actually does) who finally sees the light. There are great perfor-mances throughout the film thankfully, especially from Pollack and Tilda Swinton(Constantine, The Chronicles of Narnia) as U-North exec and heir-to-her-boss'-throne Karen Crowder. The final scene between Clay-ton and Crowder, in fact, was the best scene in the film and a powerful payoff to all the blandness which had gone before it. But unfortunately it was far too little and far too late, and as riveting as the wordplay between Clooney and Swinton is in this scene, it simply wasn't worth the two hours it took to get to it. Honestly, unless you're a law student about to take the bar exam and you need to watch something to pep you up before setting pencil to paper, I can't see the value in anyone sitting through a film with as plodding a plot, and which seems so uncertain of which story it actually wants to tell.

 
     Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.