The Corporate World

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2010)

George Clooney gives a great performance (right up there with "Good Night and Good Luck") as a driven Type A personality corporate type with no personal life. He plays the part of an outsourced downsizer, Ryan Bingham, who is contracted to fire people across the country, 24/7. A timely movie in these economic times.
Ryan can't abide the few days a year he spends at home and only feels threatened when a new hot shot employee in his company threatens to knock him from his pedestal of constant travel by creating a technique of firing people on the internet.
George has one goal in an otherwise meaningless existence: he wants to achieve a stratospheric level of total airmiles which few others have reached.
Natalie, the go-getter new employee played by Anna Kendrick, and Ryan don't go the Hollywood route in their relationship, which is refreshing. Instead they get to lean emotionally on each other outside of the job. A friendship rather than a romance, which I found appealing. And real.
Ryan plays a detached Casanova, with random meetings in hotel rooms that are quickly forgotten. His life is thrown out of kilter by the announcement of his baby sister's wedding and a series of silly photos she wishes him to take.
Vera Farmiga plays Alex with sublety and confidence, in a great line she says of herself:"just think of me as you with a vagina". And she is bang on.
Nuance and emotion exist side by side in the movie with comedy and heartbreak. I've often thought that George channels Clark Gable, both physically and the wonderful facets of comedy he is able to portray. the roles he chooses are a challenge as George doesn't often get the girl. His roles are more complex than that as he plumbs ever deeper into roles that on the surface can appear light.
This is a movie I would like to see again as there are many threads and many little stories along the way leading to George's denouement which I won't spoil here. Suffice to say is that the normal 2X4s are missing. The whole drama is understated rather than overstated and ultimately very satisfying.
The real life people faced with job loss portrayed in the film are heartbreaking. Some wrote their own scripts or reiterated their own exit dramas from real life jobs.
Watch till the last credit rolls as the movie doesn't 'end' when it 'ends'.
8 out of 10 from me and yes, I would see it again.