The cool and trendy film featuring the one and only George Clooney receives a raving review from Mike Hastings. As a former critic for Detroit Metrotimes and the current director of Netflix, Hastings' insights on popular American films as well as on the actors make his review more enjoyable, engaging and informative. Hastings draws on accurate and concise picture of Clooney's Michael Clayton without any spoiler, especially by the comparison he makes to Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, an all American classic film.
By providing a backgroudn on Tony Gilroy, the director of Michael Clayton and the screenwriter for the Bourne Trilogy, Hastings allows his readers to establish an expectation for a suave political thriller.
An unmistakable fan of Clooney, Hastings praises this "most perversely bankable leading man in Hollywood," and shows his strong preference to Clooney over Edward Norton or Mel Gibson. (This may be arguable yet point well taken!)
I especially enjoyed his comparison of Tilda Swinton's Karen to "Lady Macbeth in a Burberry scarf, ruining lives with a stroke of her Blackberry." Further down in the review, this image of an all mighty corporate executives is reinforced when Hastings points out multinational corporations being stronger than Oprah and God combined in today's society. Satirical and exaggerated metaphors Hastings uses are right on the dot.
Hastings also targets a broader spectrum of audience by ensuring them that they "don't have to necessarily buy into the movie's dogma to enjoy" the film.
In the kicker, Hastings ties the knot by going back to calling Clayton a 'fixer' as he did in the lede of his review. This clever return to the point one smoothly concludes the piece. the only possible flaw on this review is that Hastings, for better or for worse, may be building too high of an expectation in his readers for the film.
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1 comment:
Great analysis, Heain. I really like how you draw attention to the ways he builds context through comparisons.
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