It’s rare to find a movie that is intelligent enough to be suspenseful without the need for explosions every five seconds and interesting enough to keep my attention without a single bare breast.

Michael Clayton was written and directed by the same guy who wrote the Bourne movie trilogy, Tony Gilroy, so you know he has nothing against ka-booms. There’s no far-fetched spy drama here, just a fascinating look into the world of high-stakes litigation where billions of dollars can hang by a thread. It’s fascinating because in my own life, it’s $99 hanging by a thread (on a good day).

The plot is entirely plausible because you accept what shady businesspeople under pressure might do to save their skins. That is part of what makes Michael Clayton such a gripping thriller: Not only could it happen this way, but in some instances, it probably DOES go down like this.

The movie recently landed Tilda Swinton with an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. It was nominated in six other categories: acting nods to George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson, Gilroy as Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Musical Score, and Best Picture. Swinton also won a BAFTA in her native England.

Swinton is excellent as a hanging-on-by-her-fingernails chief legal executive at an agribusiness megacorp – the type of woman that has scratched her way to the top and looks like her nerves are shot as a result. She hides this behind polished, rehearsed appearances. Her business ethics are tested in the ultimate way, and she turns out just as deadly as her company, which has been selling a product it knows causes cancer.

She’s desperate to avoid losing a $3 billion class-action lawsuit after the “fixer” – an attorney who specialises in cleaning up messes -- assigned to her corporation (Wilkinson) suffers a meltdown/crisis of conscience and threatens to become a whistleblower. Clooney also plays a fixer who is called upon to save the case for his powerful New York law firm.

I was more impressed with Clooney’s performance here than anything else I’ve seen him do (and he’s done enough great stuff to make us forget about that ‘sexiest man alive’ nonsense, especially since he has never returned a single one of my editor’s love letters). His character is backed into a corner that offers little room to fight free. He could probably come up with the $75,000 he must find to pay a debt on a failed restaurant if he didn’t blow his money compulsively gambling in a seedy back room in Chinatown. Other than time spent with his son, his life seems to revolve around fixing problems for the powerful elite. He’s in a position of having to undo the damage to defend this despicable company.

The former prosecutor in Clayton re-emerges and he unravels a mystery that leads him back to the pin-striped villains.

The finale is one of those scenes that will have you cheering as you watch Swinton’s desperation to bluff Clooney. You’ll definitely like this movie if you are one of those people who thinks that corporations rule the world and have too much power, although don’t expect a message movie. Well, no message other than to not lose your soul in pursuit of the bottom line. And we all know that old one.

The story jumps around in time so you know full well, with a sense of dread, where this thing is headed. Taking the journey is the real fun.


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Fun Fact

The Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedan that is blown up in this film was first used in the filming of The Devil Wears Prada. It was cut in two for use in process shots featuring Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway, then welded back together and repainted in order to be blown up in this movie.