Somewhere in Heaven, the great Billy Wilder is Smiling

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 2010)

I wasn't really prepared for Jason Reitman's "Up In The Air"; given the trailers I'd viewed, it looked like it would be a smart-ass little comedy.
Boy, did I blow it by avoiding it in the theater and electing to wait for the DVD.
In a nutshell, George Clooney is Ryan Bingham, traveling corporate cut-throat who has his honed his terminator skills to a fine science. When he discovers that fellow head-hunter Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is about to make him obsolete, he petitions his younger boss (Jason Bateman) to allow him to round her up for a road trip to show her how it's done. Along this merry path of old dog/new trick comes Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), road warrior herself, whom Ryan discovers also delights in the high-flying traveling business life.
But along the way Ryan and Natalie discover just what is entailed in terminating individuals from the corporate payrolls; and Ryan begins to wonder about the road he has chosen and enjoyed for so long.
"Up In The Air" is a masterpiece that feels and sounds like a unreleased Billy Wilder film. I've already dove-tailed it (double-feature-style) with Wilder's 1960 classic "The Apartment", and it is san-fran-tastic to behold!! The nuances and shadings that George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and Jason Bateman bring to this picture cannot be underestimated. Even if the great Billy Wilder had made this in an earlier decade, the best actors he could come up with in the respective roles would have been Cary Grant, Shirley Jones, Shirley MacLaine and Jack Lemmon; and even then, they couldn't do it this wonderful justice.
Very rarely do I give a film 10 stars; this is one that I do.