Michael Clayton

Features strong performances and a solid story, drawn from the familiar well of faceless corporations grinding ordinary people through their profit-making machinery. Yet Gilroy's fidelity to his script comes at the expense of the pacing...

A taut psychological thriller with crisp killer dialogue and complete with one of the most satisfying endings in a long time.

As with the Bourne films, Gilroy has a knack for creating strong characters and situations that resonate with tension. It may be formula, but the guy is a solid chemist as he crafts excellent set-ups and payoffs...

This offers moments of suspense, some pointed scenes and star charisma, but it’s also a touch confused. Heads will be scratched before they roll.

There's nothing wrong with this slick, much-plaudited movie – how can there be when Time magazine's film critic named it his best from last year? But what was most fascinating about it for me was that in a world of indecent salaries and vast bonuses there's a job that exists like Clayton's – smoothing things out, match- making client and lawyer – and that in this movie at least it was paid relatively badly.

It's all held together by the magnetic presence of George Clooney, however, who manages to be compelling even when he's just sitting in the back of a taxi, staring straight ahead.

Corporate evil plots are nothing to write home about, but what lifts Michael Clayton are the star turns from Clooney, Wilkinson and finally Tilda Swinton's hard-ass litigator for U-North. Similarly, those in charge of cinematography, editing and music all do their job with large doses of polish. It's all very smooth, but the problem is it's also a bit anodyne and unlikely to hold up in comparisons to Clooney's other 'serious' films, whose stories have more to offer underneath the polish...