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Michael Clayton
Promotional film poster
Directed by	Tony Gilroy
Produced by	Sydney Pollack Steve Samuels Jennifer Fox
Written by	Tony Gilroy
Starring	George Clooney Tom Wilkinson Tilda Swinton
Music by	James Newton Howard
Cinematography	Robert Elswit
Editing by	John Gilroy
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pathé (UK)
Release date(s)	October 5, 2007
Running time	119 min
Country	United States and  United Kingdom
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Michael Clayton is a dramatic law thriller film written and directed by Tony Gilroy, co-produced by George Clooney, and starring Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. It chronicles the attempts of attorney Michael Clayton to cope with a colleague's apparent mental breakdown and corruption within his law firm.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Production 3 Release 4 Critical reception 5 Awards 5.1 Wins 5.2 Nominated 6 Soundtrack 7 References 8 External links

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an attorney and former gambling addict employed as a "fixer" at a prestigious law firm in New York City. After meeting with a colleague's key client who had accidentally struck a pedestrian with his car, Clayton spots some horses near the side of the road. He stops driving, leaves his car and climbs a hill to go admire the animals, and his car explodes in a fireball.

The plot then flashes back to four days earlier. Clayton has just received the news that he owes $75,000 to organized crime figures due to a failed attempt to found a bar with his brother when he is informed that one of the firm's leading attorneys, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), has suffered a mental breakdown. In the middle of a crucial deposition involving a class action lawsuit against the firm's largest client, corporate giant U-North, Edens began rambling incoherently and stripped naked. Dispatched to fix the situation, Clayton gets Edens out of jail in Milwaukee and learns that his friend, who had a mental breakdown in the past, is not taking his medication. Before Clayton can escort Edens back to New York City, where he will hopefully receive medical care, Edens sneaks away and returns to New York on his own. Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), U-North's chief counsel, takes Edens' briefcase from the deposition room and discovers that Edens, U-North's defense attorney, had an internal memorandum that proves the company's liability for releasing cancer-causing chemicals. When Crowder learns that Edens cannot be committed, she decides to take matters into her own hands and hires two men (Robert Prescott, Terry Serpico) to follow Edens, tap his phone, and install bugs in his apartment. Her surveillance and the firm's review of documents in Eden's office reveals that Edens was actually building a case against U-north, his own client. Crowder contracts the two spies to murder Edens, and their methods fool the police into believing it was a suicide.

Clayton is distraught at the death of his co-worker and friend, but becomes suspicious when he learns both that U-North was planning on settling and that Edens had purchased a plane ticket to New York for one of the class-action plaintiffs (Merritt Wever). With the passive assistance of his brother, an NYPD police detective, he breaks into Edens' apartment and discovers a receipt for a large order at a copy store. At the store he finds that Edens has assembled documents that present a damning case against U-North, and has made thousands of copies. Clayton takes a copy and leaves, but the two hit men are now tailing him, and they inform Crowder. While Clayton plays poker, one of the hit men rigs his car with a bomb. Clayton leaves the game earlier than expected, interrupting the hit man's re-installation of the GPS tracking device, causing it to give off an inconsistent signal. At this point, the plot has caught up to the events shown at the beginning of the film, and Clayton drives to Westchester County to meet with the client who committed the hit-and-run. Clayton is followed by the two hit men, but they have trouble tracking him. Knowing that he is nearby, but not his exact location, the hit men detonate the bomb.

However, as seen in the beginning, unbeknownst to the hit men, Clayton is unharmed, because he is not in the car. He runs to the side of the car and throws his phone, wallet, and watch into the fire, causing initial reports to indicate he was killed in the explosion. At a U-North board of directors meeting, Crowder proposes that the settlement agreement be extended. When she steps out of the conference room to allow the directors to confer, Clayton surprises her. He tells her he has access to copies of the U-North memo and that he knows she was responsible for Edens' death and the attempt on his own life. He demands to be paid off for his silence, asking for $10 million, which Crowder eventually agrees to. Clayton responds, "You're so fucked," and walks away as police officers approach. Clayton reveals he had a phone in his pocket the entire time, and his brother (Sean Cullen), the NYPD detective, was secretly listening to the conversation on a Bluetooth headset. As Crowder and the U-North Chair (Ken Howard) are arrested, Clayton leaves the building and gets in a taxi. He gives the driver $50 and tells him to just drive.

The film premiered August 31, 2007 at the Venice Film Festival and was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7, 2007. It opened in the United Kingdom on September 28, 2007. The film opened in limited release in the United States on October 5, 2007 and opened in wide release in the U.S. on October 12, 2007.^[1]

Released wide on October 12, 2007, the film grossed $10,373,422 on the opening week. As of December 17, it has an estimated gross of $38,930,778.

As of November 2, 2007 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 160 reviews and a 94% 'Cream of the Crop' rating.^[2] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 82 out of 100, based on 36 reviews.^[3]

• National Board of Review
  • Best Actor (George Clooney)

• 65th Golden Globe Awards ^[4]
  • Best Motion Picture - Drama
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (George Clooney)
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Tom Wilkinson)
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Tilda Swinton)

• Satellite Awards
  • Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Drama (Tom Wilkinson)
  • Best Actress in a Supporting Role - Drama (Tilda Swinton)
  • Best Original Screenplay (Tony Gilroy)

• Venice Film Festival
  • Golden Lion (Tony Gilroy)

Main article: Michael Clayton (soundtrack)

The original score and songs were composed by James Newton Howard.

• Michael Clayton at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Clayton at Rotten Tomatoes
• Michael Clayton at Metacritic

• Michael Clayton at Box Office Mojo
• Michael Clayton at All Movie Guide