Film review: Up in the Air

Published on Thursday 14 January 2010 18:25

UP IN THE AIR (15) **** DIRECTED BY: JASON REITMAN STARRING: GEORGE CLOONEY, VERA FARMIGA, ANNA KENDRICK, DANNY MCBRIDE

GEORGE Clooney has evolved into such a silky smooth movie star over the years that sometimes it's easy to underestimate what he does as an actor.

That's hardly surprising. One of the benefits – and one of the fundamental appeals – of Clooney's status as Hollywood's most natural on-screen charmer since Cary Grant is his ability to coast through frivolous films like the Ocean's Eleven movies and make them seem much better than they actually are.

The downside is that, unless he's sporting a bushy beard and a few extra pounds (as he did in Syriana), or playing the idiot (as he's done repeatedly for the Coen brothers), it's sometimes difficult to tell where the movie star aura ends and performance begins.

He was phenomenal in Out of Sight and Three Kings, for instance, perfectly in sync with the demands of their respective stories, yet the goodwill he always generates duped plenty of people into thinking the mediocre Michael Clayton was some kind of modern-day classic (remember all those Oscar nominations it accrued?).

That's why his latest role is such a slippery one to get a handle on. In Up in the Air, he plays Ryan Bingham, a professional downsizer – a terminator if you will – who spends his days flying across America's time zones firing employees on behalf of companies too gutless to do it themselves.

Essentially a silver-tongued salesman, he's there to minimise the trauma for the newly "let go" (he never uses the word "fired") by putting a human face on a faceless corporate decision and convincing the victims that this is the best thing that could have happened to them. "Anyone who's ever built an empire sat where you're sitting right now" is one of his favourite lines, and because these words are coming from Clooney's lips, it's easy to believe he's being sincere, even when it's a 57-year-old autoworker with no hope of finding another job sitting in front of him.

This is part of the thing with Ryan, though: he genuinely seems to believe there's a dignity to what he does, even when it's clear that this belief stems from the fact that it suits his self-serving personal philosophy of a life without baggage.

Spending much of the year travelling, racking up millions of airmiles and hotel loyalty points in the process (he doesn't pay for anything that won't benefit his mileage count in some way), he's grown so accustomed to the efficiency and artificial friendliness of executive travel, he's arranged his life in the same manner.

His minimal apartment, where he spends the few miserable days of the year he's not required to work, has the sleek, anonymous, airless quality of a mid-level luxury hotel, replete with functional closet space, a fridge stocked full of miniatures and a view across an anonymous city landscape. He doesn't really have any friends, just casual acquaintances, and he barely exists for his family. As he says via his opening voice-over: "To know me is to fly with me. This is where I live."

What's more, anything that can't be stuffed into a piece of carry-on luggage isn't worth keeping – a mantra he's transformed into an empty lifestyle choice that he sells to other executives on the motivational speaking circuit.

That Clooney makes Ryan seem in any way appealing is why he's a movie star – his natural charisma makes it easy to root for Ryan despite the collateral damage he leaves in his wake. Clooney's real skill here, though, is to dig deep and show us a deeply flawed man exhibiting recognisable human behaviour. This starts to happen with the arrival of two women in his life.

The first is Alex (Vera Farmiga), a similarly baggage-free frequent flier he meets in an executive lounge. They bond over their respective collection of loyalty cards, sleep together almost immediately and just as quickly realise that they want more than a one-night stand with each other – they want a series of one-night stands.

The second is Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a young corporate go-getter who is sent out on the road with Ryan as part of an efficiency drive that threatens to ground him in office, where he'll have to conduct his business via a more impersonal webcam, a plan that will save his unscrupulous boss (Jason Bateman) huge amounts of money and ruin his way of life.

Both women are good matches for Clooney, with Farmiga presenting him with his strongest lead since Jennifer Lopez in Out of Sight (they share a similar simmering sexual tension) and Kendrick's nave ruthlessness supplying him with a decent comic foil to bounce off.

Director Jason Reitman, who made the patchy tobacco satire Thank You For Smoking and the magnificent Juno, also works hard to make the movie as slick a package as his leading man.

Yet for all the sharp one-liners and breezy visuals that sometimes suggest the film might be in danger of floating away into the ether, Reitman remembers to add some weight to proceedings, sprinkling testimonials from real-life victims of the recession throughout and keeping attention focused on the human cost of Ryan's job.

Ending with a little nod to the ambiguous "what-now?" finale of The Graduate, he also subtly eliminates any artificial vindication bestowed upon Ryan in the closing minutes, with Clooney nailing perfectly the look of a hollow man realising too late he's lost his way.