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Dirty Sexy Money

'Michael Clayton' is this year's big award night, token medium budget movie with a conscious... "The Intelligent Thriller", the one that garners momentum because it has enjoyed sharp lobbying with all the right backing and casting to get it noticed, but a very average movie under the glitzy wrapping paper. The Academy wants something that looks and feels thoughtful and challenging in the mix to show their liberal side and Michael Clayton ticks all the right boxes.

In truth the viewers are victim to an old Hollywood trick here where the director and cast make the audience think they are cleverer than they are because they have worked out the plot and narrative before the actors have, yet in reality the story is quite weak and the movie not that smart. There's one every year and George Clooney and the excellent Tom Wilkinson are usually at the heart of it.

Clooney, the son of a famous American newscaster who suffered in the McCarthy era, is Hollywood's Mr. Political these days and repeatedly picks scripts that project that image. He would make a great US Senator and I expect him to run soon. But he can only get so much of his angst out through his movies that continue to be an audition for high political office in America. Unfortunately Arnold Schwarzenegger has beaten him to it.

The deliciously flamboyant Tilda Swinton, who wore the most extravagant pink and sliver dress at the BAFTAS because she honestly thought she wouldn't win, also picked up best female actress at the Oscars for her role as a corporate lobbyist here. It's no where near the best female lead performance in film in the last 12 months but it was in the category that needed a perfunctory winner this year. Tom Wilkinson is always watchable on film and a clever British actor that has genuinely cracked America in that he isn't always cast as the villain these days.

-The Plot-

Michael Clayton (Clooney) is a fixer, an experienced lawyer with a big Manhattan firm who does all the dirty jobs that need doing, his bad habits outside of his work complimenting his chosen career. But he gets the job done and his latest mission is to try and sort out one of the firms high-flying senior partners, Arthur Eden's (Wilkinson), who has gone loco in a provincial court and stripped naked, an incident that needs to be covered up sharpish as it may jeopardize the firms big merger with another law giant. But Eddings outburst is not the end of it, on the contrary. It turns out he's had an epiphany, an attack

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