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George Clooney in “Michael Clayton”

GEORGE CLOONEY, LIKE A HUMPHREY BOGART, HOLDS THE MYSTERY IN “MICHAEL CLAYTON”

MICHAEL CLAYTON is the name of the film by the beginner filmmaker Tony Gilroy. The American director, from New York, might be unknown, despite having written the screenplays for the three successful films of the “Bourne” series. But his actor George Clooney, better at each film, everybody knows. It works like that in the star system...

This time Tony Gilroy writes the screenplay, in an excellent job, for the film he himself directs. Americans, when they want to show culture in movies, pay homage to b films, the cheap productions from the 40’s and 50’s, which were later revered by the French, baptized and gathered under the seal of ‘film noir’. One of the icons of ‘noir’ films was the fabulous Humphrey Bogart, an actor who thought in scene and made the audience think with him, even if it was only to solve the charade of a banal crime. George Clooney, just like a Humphrey Bogart, repeats the myth, and sustains the mystery in MICHAEL CLAYTON to the last scene of the film.

MICHAEL CLAYTON talks about corruption in a big agro-chemical corporation. As no one can be corrupt alone, the corporation counts on a sophisticated network of connivance. Except for a lawyer in the middle of a crisis, who crosses the way of its millionaire interests. The lawyer is hired to whitewash the apparent madness breakdown of a former director of the corporation, but we follow him along winding tracks cut by a beautiful flashback narrative. The film is good. Especially because you leave it feeling like prolonging the pleasure with an old ‘noir’, with or without Bogart.

English version: Laura Rebessi