Michael Clayton

It is almost dawn. Michael Clayton (George Clooney) has spent the best part of an hour explaining to a wealthy client that he can't make a hit-and-run accident go away just by waving his high priced city law firm at it. What he needs to do is face up to his responsibilities and hire a good local guy. Point made, Clayton speeds off down a country road, only to screech to a halt at the sight of three horses standing beside a tree on top of a hill. Something about this picture draws him out into the early morning half-light and up the hill. That's when the car explodes.

It's bold of screenwriter Tony Gilroy to hinge his first film as director on this nebulous incident, a freak impulse that coincidentally saves Clayton's bacon and sets him on the path to redemption. Bold and borderline crazy - qualities this solid, pumped up legal drama could have used more of. At any rate, Gilroy likes the scene enough that he shows it twice, once early on, then again towards the end - and the second time round, we might just pick up on a fleeting visual rhyme that ties those horses to both Michael's son and Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), his friend and mentor.

Arthur's mental breakdown gets the show rolling. We hear early rumbles in the film's opening moments, an impassioned, evangelical diatribe against the law firm both men work for, and the kind of law they dedicate themselves to "excreting", as he puts it. Arthur, it transpires, has spent the past six years ("30,000 billable hours") defending a agro-chemical firm, "U-north", from a three billion dollar civil suit. The thing is, U-north did poison those farmers, and they know it - and Arthur just can't take it anymore. Probably he should have taken a vacation. Instead, he performs an impromptu striptease routine right in front of the judge.

More of this might have been fun, too, especially with such a solid and dependable actor as Tom Wilkinson, but Gilroy isn't about to launch into the full monty; he has consciences to prick. "Pretend that it's not madness," Arthur pleads with Michael - which is asking a lot in the circumstances. But Gilroy is more than ready to ride that train of thought; it's not like he's pulling for the toxic conglomerate with the contract killers waiting in the wings. It just takes Michael Clayton some time to reprioritize his loyalties.

Gilroy's spent most of the last five years wrestling with the ghost of Jason Bourne, so it's understandable he relishes the chance to flesh out a character and get to grips with some good old fashioned "issues", even if Clayton's financial troubles and family tribulations seem largely beside the point. But it's weird how he slowly turns into another loose cannon, stumbling across a conspiracy that makes him a threat to his own team… in other words, Bourne again.

Looking a shade greyer than usual, Clooney is conscientiously grim throughout; it's probably not his fault that Tilda Swinton keeps straying in from a much more interesting movie about u-North's ambitious, morally unmoored chief counsel, Karen Crouder. People keep calling Clayton a bagman and a fixer (he calls himself a janitor, and seems to mean it), but it's Swinton who really gets her hands dirty and who has sold her soul to the devil. She gets a great first shot, cramping with flop sweat in panic or remorse. "Michael Clayton" is an absorbing character study, but "Arthur Edens" might have made for a more compelling satire, and "Karen Crouder" could have been full-blown horror. Tom Charity Tom.charity@lovefilm.com