Up in the Air (15)

Alison Rowat's Review

George Clooney, he of the million dollar looks, is not a man one readily associates with wheeled luggage and provincial airports. More of a private jet kind of actor is our George. Seeing him reduced to a mere working mortal, albeit one who travels business class, is just one of many treats on offer in Jason Reitman’s whip-smart and captivating comedy drama.

Reitman, director of the pro-motherhood Juno and the anti-tobacco, anti-lobbyist Thank You For Smoking, has a knack for being in the right place with the right picture at an opportune time.

Up in the Air is his credit crunch comedy, the first of what will doubtless be many off the Hollywood assembly line, and a slickly constructed piece of work it is, too.

It’s also a chance for Clooney to dial down the charm and display a more interesting side. Michael Clayton showed that he could play “man on the edge of a nervous breakdown” with the best of them. Up in the Air finds him at a midway point between the champagne comedies for which he’s best known, and the meaty reds of Clayton and Good Night, and Good Luck. Say hello to the new, bittersweet – still mostly sweet – George.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, who works for a firm that makes people redundant. In Reitman’s gimlet-eyed portrait of corporate America, even that task has been outsourced.

As a sideline, Ryan operates as a motivational speaker, advising middle managers how to streamline their personal lives the better to focus on their careers. It’s all about the baggage with this guy.

As we see in the initial scenes of Ryan in action, he’s very good at what he does, a regular Mack the Knife. Such pretty teeth, dear, and he shows them pearly white as he comforts, sympathises, and cajoles. Ryan’s greatest asset is that he can keep these intensely personal encounters impersonal. The individual sitting opposite might be shocked, angry or tearful, but Ryan stays on an even keel, his emotions as well ordered as the wardrobe in the drab bachelor home he rarely sees.

When not on an even keel, Ryan is doing what the title says, trying to rack up the ten million air miles that will give him the key to executive lounge heaven and a better class of shortbread finger. (In Walter Kirn’s 2001 novel the target was a mere one million.)

Barring the way is a new programme, invented by a graduate trainee, that will allow Ryan’s firm to fire people via video link. No more travelling means no more air miles, and no more brief encounters with the glamorous Alex (Vera Farmiga), a woman with almost as many loyalty cards in her wallet as Ryan.

The new system requires some tweaks, which means Ryan taking whiz kid Natalie (Anna Kendrick) on the road. They make an odd, endearing couple, though not in that way. The gauche Natalie – she doesn’t even have a wheeled suitcase – is the daughter Ryan never wanted, just as the no nonsense, busy-busy Alex is his dream lover.

The refreshingly gabby screenplay by Reitman and Sheldon Turner gives Clooney several long speeches, the funniest of which is his impromptu seminar in how to pass through an airport as painlessly as possible. Seasoned Scotland to London schleppers won’t know whether to laugh or wince.

There are several ouch moments in Up in the Air, many of them occurring during interviews with the newly redundant.

Then there is the working world Reitman portrays. Ryan and his ilk, with their express check-ins and other perks, might fool themselves that they have this life sussed, but they are just better dressed versions of Willy Loman. Like hamsters on a wheel, the only thing keeping them going is keeping going. And every place they go looks the same because it is the same – the same hotels, shops, car parks. The office is everywhere.

Reitman, mercifully, knows when to ease off the gloom and let in the light. In this case, that means allowing the romance part of the story to take over. This is where the picture, and Clooney’s character, take a turn for the fascinating.

The usual way of things in a Clooney comedy is for him to be the sun around which female characters revolve. Not here, not with Farmiga and Kendrick, both of whom are excellent.

It’s not often Clooney finds himself opposite such strong female competition, but it suits him. The older (and greyer) he gets, the more one sees that with Clooney the best is yet to come. On this form he could sell ice lollies to Eskimos, bankers’ bonuses to taxpayers, or recession comedies in a recession.

But then Reitman’s film as a whole works overtime to confound expectations. Belying its title, this is a comedy with its feet on the ground, its head screwed on, and its heart in the right, not too sentimental, place.

Paul Greenwood's Review

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is hired by large companies to fire people on their behalf. As he travels the country like the grim reaper, he spends his life in airports and hotels, which is just how he likes it.

He can collect his air miles and have casual pick-ups in hotel bars, such as Vera Farmiga’s equally single-minded businesswoman.

When he learns they’re going to start firing people by computer and that he’ll be based in the office, the news hits Ryan like he himself has been fired, and he goes on the road with the young colleague (Anna Kendrick) whose idea the change was, to teach her the ropes and the perils of the job.

Up In The Air is currently gathering some serious Oscar buzz, and is in fact many people’s favourite to take the best film prize, though The Hurt Locker and Avatar may have something to say about that.

There’s not really a great deal to it, but it’s warm and believable and, as a mirror on our troubled times, quite affecting. Ryan is a balanced character who doesn’t have to be misanthropic to enjoy his lifestyle, but he also doesn’t have the weight of the world on him like Clooney’s Michael Clayton did.

It’s not one of those films where everyone learns valuable life lessons, or at least it isn’t right up until the point when it threatens to become just that, resorting to cliche in its later stages and dragging its feet a little as a result.

Clooney is smooth but also quiet, controlled and free of smarm. He’s rarely been better. He’s pretty much guaranteed his fifth Oscar nomination, although whether he picks up his second statuette is another matter. Likely to join him as nominees are Farmiga and the quite brilliant Kendrick, who goes from brittle to vulnerable, and the three of them together are the heart of a slick, often very funny drama that is well worth your time.