Not exactly what you want in a typical movie

Rating: 7/10 (26 February 2011)

So, do you want a movie that has a nice tidy ending where everybody lives happily ever after? How about a movie where promiscuity is demonized? Or a movie where corporate America is the bad guy? OK, maybe one where the protagonist (ie hero in most movies), has an awakening and ends up better off for it? Sorry, this movie is not for you. But do you want a movie that mostly is a slice of real life, with people facing real problems, and reacting to them like people in the rest of the country do? Where everything is not nicely tied (or tidied) up like most Hollywood fantasies? Maybe you want a movie that gets you thinking about relationships, and what having a job - or losing it - means, and how important families can be.
Or maybe a movie showing the disengagement too many people are having in the early 21st century as the workplace and jobs go through monumental changes.
George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, an employee of a third party company that is hired to fire people and flies around the country doing so, so the the company actually responsible for the firing can keep their hands clean of something they know in their hearts is very dirty business. (I've been through that process) He's a professional and goes about it professionally, meeting people face to face, gauging their reactions and changing his delivery depending on how the person is taking it.
A new kid on the block shows up in the person of Natalie Keener, a recent business school graduate who wants to depersonalize the firing (if it isn't already!) by using internet virtual meeting rooms and web cams to do the firing, which will put Ryan out of a job.
Ryan only does two positive things in the movie, he talks his future brother-in-law, who gets cold feet on the day of his wedding, to go through with it, and he writes a letter of recommendation for Natalie which sells her to the company she applies to after quitting her job at Ryan's company, because she thinks she somehow failed. And that's about it. The rest of the movie is a study in mostly disconnected relationships and how people cope.
***spoiler here*** At the end of the movie, Ryan is back doing his job, because he is really good at it, and he knows it. And he is wanted because of it.
There's a love interest, played, to me anyway, quite well by Vera Farmiga. She knows exactly what she wants out of life, and exactly where Ryan's character fits (). And it's obvious some reviewers feel uneasy about an independent sexually active woman who is not somehow made to be villainous.
Not a 10 by a long shot, but a decent little movie about one slice of life. And guess what? Most of our lives and future seem to be up in the air more than we would like.