George Clooney leads an outstanding cast-- Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollack, Tilda Swinton who won an Oscar for her performance, Michael O'Keefe et al.-- in Director Tony Gilroy's first movie "Michael Clayton." Clooney is an attorney in a huge law firm who never goes to court. His job is as a janitor who cleans up everybody else's messes. And the mess in this movie-- at least one of them-- is that the lead attorney Arthur (Wilkinson), who is defending a three billion class action lawsuit, appears to have gone bananas in a deposition and removed all his clothes except his shoes and socks.

The plot is complex and not for the lazy so it is probably better appreciated in the luxury of your own home away from a theatre overrun with talkers and cell phones. There are several threads woven into the plot. Clayton (Clooney) has both family problems and money problems of his own that he has to "clean up," along with his janitorial duties at work. (The kid who plays Clayton's son, by the way, almost steals the movie away from Clooney.)

The DVD version permits the viewer to watch this film in its entirety with the director's comments in a voice-over. After listening to about ten minutes or so of Gilroy's remarks and he was still informing us of how he came to make this film, blah, blah, blah, I decided I had heard enough. Listening to directors expound on their films is 99 times out of 100 a waste of one's precious life.

As I watched this fine performance by Mr. Clooney, I remembered an article I read a couple of years or so ago when Bill O'Reilly opined that Clooney's left-leaning political views would sound the death knell of his acting career. What do you think of your brown-eyed boy now, Mr. O'Reilly?

I bought this movie because Clooney got a nomination for best actor for it. I haven't watched it yet, but a lot of people told me it was very boring.

I watched this movie because my daughter highly recommended it, and she rarely highly recommends anything. I expected to fully enjoy the movie.

I thought the acting was good, but am unable to write a synopsis as I still don't quite understand what was happening. I believe it has something to do with an unsafe product, the company that produces it, and a few lawyers of which I can't tell whose side they're on. Anyway, it appears that the good guy wins in the end, which is not obvious because you don't know who the good guy is until the end.

I liked George Clooney's performance, but found the movie quite confusing. My husband actually fell asleep because being confused really bores him. I stayed awake and was glad I did in the end, but it takes patience to get there.

I really enjoyed this film. I thought the performances were great and the plot was good. My other half was a little confused with the chronology of it to start with, but it soon became clear for her.

This is certainly a "Saturday Evening In" film.

dramatic actor. Michael Clayton is not so much a great movie as it is an award worthy performance by George Clooney & Tom Wilkerson. George Clooney plays an attorney (Clayton) known as a fixer. He is brought in late to clean up cases that have gone south. He was a fine litigator, but never got his chance. Tom Wilkerson is a top flight litigator who cracks up & changes sides. It is Clooney's job to clean up the mess. They both work for a morally bankrupt law firm hired to defend a corrupt chemical company. Key moments of the movie take place in Milwaukee & Wisconsin farm country. They both are turned by a crisis of conscience & somebody tries to kill them both in separate incidents. Not a particularly brillant plot. But the acting is. This movie should be seen because it is good & entertaining, but also for the transcendent acting.

Though this movie has been much appreciated in general, i do not feel it's damn good or anything. Just that it's made on a true story and the lead actor is George Clooney and all.. have helped it create it's hype. I am not saying it's a bad movie, but it's nowhere in the same league as Erin Brokovich or Philadelphia.

I thought it was slow at the beginning, but then it started picking up and turned out to be exciting.
The plot is good, not straight-forward, but easy to follow and the actors' performances are great. you have a little bit of everything: a conscious attorney trying to make a difference, Clooney somewhere in between, trying to decide which side he is on, Tilda giving a very good performance as the big-shot evil attorney in charge who is fighting with her consience when she has to "remove" people.
Overall, a good thriller and a nice weekend movie.

Sharp and intelligent thriller "Michael Clayton" follows a titular character played by magnetic George Clooney, a lawyer (or a "fixer") at a major New York law firm. He is facing a crisis in life, reaching 45 and heavily in debt; he doesn't like his clients, he doesn't like his jobs, and he knows he hasn't achieved anything in his life. And he must choose what he should do before the film ends, but can he really do the right thing?

Directed by Tony Gilroy (his debut film) known as writer for the "Jason Bourne" trilogy, "Michael Clayton" builds up its story very slowly in the first half and you need to be patient at times as if to pick up and put together pieces of a puzzle. I said it is a thriller, but not in the way as three action-packed Bourne films. It also deals with a similar topic as "Erin Brockovich," but you can see the truths from the beginning.

The thrills of "Michael Clayton" come from the round characters and their moral conflicts - Clooney's Clayton, Tilda Swinton's chief counsel for a big company "U/North" and Tom Wilkinson's brilliant, but now mentally unstable lawyer whose long monologue in the opening sets the tone of the film. Their acting is all wonderful, worthy of Oscar nomination and winning.

You will find "Michael Clayton" has several things that can be seen in other legal thrillers, but they are not used in a clichéd way. After all the film's tense atmosphere comes from the inner conflicts of the characters, both "good" and "bad" ones, who must do what they really don't want to do. Being somber and serious, this is definitely not a film to everyone's taste, but I liked it for what it is.