I saw Michael Clayton a couple days ago on DVD. While I did enjoy it I’m not sure how it got into Academy award territory.
It could have easily passed for a John Grisham book turned movie. And not even one of the better ones.
Put it up against something like Runaway Jury and it’s not as good.
It wasn’t as “deep” or “intelligent” as some would have you believe but was rather a typical lawfirm thriller with lawyers and corporate american trying to hide their dirty secrets after sticking it to the little man.
Even though the ending was done well it wasn’t anything you haven’t seen before
Aha! I just made you confess to everything and got it all on tape. You’re finished!
I thought it was fun, light, entertaining, and hit the right emotional buttons but nothing we haven’t already seen before.
The OP is complaining because the title is just a name? Gimme a break! Don’t you realize that there’s a long history of books (and movies – but more in printed literature) of naming the work after the title character? This tells you nothing about the story itself – what it’s about, or how good it is.
Oliver Twist
Ethan Frome
Moby Dick
Hector Servadac
You['d never guess from the title that “Hector Servadac” is a science fiction work about people hitching a ride on a comet by Jules Verne 9which is probably why they changed the title to “Off on a Comet”
If we can’t rant about movies without sitting through them, the terrorists have already won.
To be fair, “the name sucks” was only one of the OP’s points, the other one being “all the clips I’ve seen from this movie have been really, really boring.”
And, to be fair, does the movie have any explosions or car chases in it? No? Well, there you go: boring!
There is actually a nice explosion. And, they got the sound right; your POV is with characters some distance away, and you see the explosion before you hear it.
In terms of plot, it’s nothing new and not very plausible, but the main characters are so well brought out by the actors that I got drawn in. Tom Wilkinson is one of my favorite actors, and I found his character the most interesting one in the movie. There’s also one of the best-done murder-for-hire scenes I’ve seen, showing how acts of pure evil are carried out in an utterly banal, callous fashion.
Saw it last night and enjoyed it. But the end left me scratching my head:
His car blows up, he throws some personal belongings in the fire - a watch, a wallet - etc. and we are supposed to believe that folks are convinced he is dead, despite the fact there is no body?
My assumption was that[spoiler]only a few hours had passed between the time of the explosion and the time Clayton shows up at the convention center. Since his brother was part of PD, I thought that the calls to Clayton’s partners at the firm notifying them of Clayton’s death had been arranged so that word would spread quickly enough.
I don’t think the guys who blew up the car were going to be caught getting close enough to the car to make a thorough examination.[/spoiler]
Now I know what the OP reminds me of- after learning that Johnny Tremain has a deformed hand, Bart Simpson proudly announces, “They should call this book Johnny Deformed!”
