Movies to watch: Risky Conduct

The year 2007 was one of those magical moments in American cinema, where “Black Blood”, “No Country for Old Men”, “Juno”, “Atonement”, “The Gangster” and other good titles competed for awards and the public attention. “Risk Conduct” (Michael Clayton) was on that podium. 

Tony Gilroy was making his debut as a director. But it was from his pen that the scripts for the “Bourne” trilogy, “Enemy of the State”, a good film with Will Smith and Gene Hackman, and “The Devil’s Advocate” came from his pen. For Gilroy, the action comes from the confluence between paranoia and the corporate backstage that grays the ethics and morals of the characters. No one is exactly bad or good, everyone floats through this voracious financial system imploding our identity. “I’m not the enemy”, responds Michael (George Clooney) to Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson). “So who are you?”, replies Arthur. 

On the surface, Michael Clayton is a lawyer at one of the most important firms in the United States. He arrived from below. He studied, was a prosecutor, and now works in the same place for 17 years without any type of connection or success. He is defined as a “cleaner”, a professional responsible for cleaning customers’ bar without their presence being noticed. Hence, Michael's enormous coldness and his passivity in the face of the professional life that swallowed him, and vomited him out as a failure and bankrupt. 

“Risk Conduct” covers four days in the life of its protagonist as he needs to put the brakes on Arthur, the brilliant lawyer from the same firm where Michael works, who freaked out after 6 years working on the U/North lawsuit, a pesticide industry, and now he wants to help the accusers. Michael Clayton will also bump into Karen (Tilda Swinton), a financial advisor at U/North, who is interested in getting rid of the lawsuit filed by farmers victimized by the pesticide. 

The script is astonishing. Tony Gilroy uses the gears of political thriller to tie us in at the opening of the film with a powerful monologue from Arthur. And they maintain the boil intelligently, without exposure. On the contrary, hidden and presented information does not necessarily tell the truth. As morality and ethics are important in answering who these people are, Gilroy creates a swampy terrain in which the smallest decisions can upend an entire life. In this corporate environment where companies gain the status of a god, what Michael, Arthur and Karen say to each other mixes with the intentions and insecurities of the same dirty water in which they try to wash themselves. 

Gilroy controls the volume of the great dialogue with precision; scatters some important symbols throughout the film; reveals each person's emotions coldly. Without the director's security at the helm of the material, the shape of the story could leave us out of the film. The sequence shot at Arthur's house, for example, shows how Gilroy imposes tension both through dialogue and silence. 

With such a good text, George Clooney creates a heavy, tired Michael Clayton, in disbelief with the environment in which he lives, and unable to abandon it. In one of his greatest works as an actor, he transforms all of the character's frustration into a type of general anesthesia. "Who are you?". If Clayton is embarrassed to say it, Arthur wants to be Shiva, the god of death. Tom Wilkinson plays the opposite of Clooney: verbose, delirious, his apparent insanity seems to be his last spark of lucidity. His clashes with Clooney are electric. But it is Tilda Swinton who goes further, moving between canine fidelity and a total lack of certainty about what she needs to do, magnetized by the darkness itself. She won the Oscar for supporting role, and her distressed scenes in the bathroom, the faltering practices of what she is going to say to the shareholders, the masterful dialogue with a henchman, and her warlike, desperate and lascivious ending, justify the award. Tilda rips a volcano out of the smallest cracks. Director and actor Sydney Pollack rounds out the great cast. Other highlights are Robert Elswit's photography and James Newton Howard's score, composing the atmosphere, reinforcing its moral and immoral symbols, and preserving the harshness of what is shown.

During “Risk Conduct”, the word miracle is said by three different characters. It's a curious detail. Like a landmine hidden by Tony Gilroy to hurt his own audience because, in this universe, one cannot live without disbelief. The last scene, in fact, is misleading. No one is redeemed. And believing in yourself – in others and in the system – doesn’t make a difference either. For Michael Clayton, “to be or not to be” will never be a question. 

Just one price. 

Where to watch: Telecine, Prime Video.