Michael Clayton
The chief litigator in a class-action lawsuit has a bipolar relapse that threatens the fortunes of agribusiness concern UNorth and compels the company’s general counsel (Tilda Swinton) toward Shakespearean acts. It also threatens the health of the law firm Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is in-house “fixer” for. Clooney, Swinton and Tom Wilkinson are the finely tuned gears that keep writer-director Tony Gilroy’s ace corporate thriller hugging the curves and purring on the straightaways — just like the Jaguar that figures into the very first mess Clayton is called to clean up. R; 119 minutes. Released today.
American Gangster
Frank Lucas was criminally audacious. The Harlem gangster juked dirty cops and mobsters alike when he set up a direct route from Thailand to the U.S. for heroin. The product was 98 percent pure and went by the street brand “Blue Magic.” Everything was in place for director Ridley Scott to deliver magic of his own. After all, you don’t begin much purer than Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. And Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Ted Levine and Ruby Dee aren’t shabby castmates. Washington plays Lucas, who cuts his lethality with a stylish business acumen. Crowe is Richie Roberts, the honest New Jersey narc aiming to bring him in. The setup has classic force: graceful gangster vs. unruly cop in a time of social unrest. But Steven Zaillian’s script makes little fresh of the face-off. What should have been great is merely good. R; 157 minutes. Released today.
In the Valley of Elah
Tommy Lee Jones plays a Vietnam veteran named Hank Deerfield, now hauling gravel in Tennessee. He gets a call from the Army that his son Mike, just returned from a tour in Iraq, is AWOL from his squad at Fort Rudd. He decides to drive down there and take a look into things. His investigation leads him to a morgue where he’s shown something cut into pieces and burned, and he IDs the remains as his son. Those who call “In the Valley of Elah” anti-Iraq-war will not have been paying attention. It doesn’t give a damn where the war is being fought. Hank Deerfield isn’t politically opposed to the war. He just wants to find out how his son came all the way home from Iraq and ended up in charred pieces in a field. PG; 120 minutes. Released today.
