Not what I expected, boring, to say the least.

Rating: 4/10 (20 June 2010)

Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney travels frequently for his job. He works for a firing service, where companies can hire him to come fire their employees. Ryan is constantly traveling and does not know what it is like to stay at home. This leaves him secluded and he does not know how to show emotion or become close to people. Natalie Kenner, played by Anna Kendrick, comes to his company with the idea of firing people over the internet. There boss, Craig Gregory, played by Jason Bateman, wants Bingham to show Natalie the ropes of the firing business. Bingham is unhappy about this because all he has ever known is "on the road". He has never had to stay in one place for a long period of time. Bingham starts to travel with Natalie and she questions him about his personal relationships with people, in particular, his relationship with Alex Goran, played by Vera Farmiga. Alex is also traveling for her job and meets Ryan Bingham on one of her trips. They plan to meet again and Alex is adamant about their relationship being strictly on the road for casual hookups. At first, Bingham is OK with this, until Natalie continues to pry into his feelings for her. Natalie gets Bingham to open up more and he realizes he is in love with Alex. The journey of showing Natalie the ropes of the business ends and Bingham can not stop thinking about Alex while he is learning the beginning stages of firing people over the internet. The ending of the movie was completely unpredictable to me and left me disappointed but everyone is entitled to their own opinion on it. The movie ends without anything happening, Bingham finds out that Alex has a family and they go their separate ways. Natalie leaves the job at the firing agency after one of her experiences with firing someone turns out bad. Therefore the project of firing people online is stopped and Bingham gets to go on the road again. The theme of the movie relates to the secluded lives of workaholics. The prying of feelings from Bingham shows that if you are constantly working, you have no time for relationships and real feelings for other people. Another movie with the same theme is The Proposal, with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Up In the Air is shot mainly in a subjective point of view, the shots are filmed as the characters in the movie would be seeing them. Especially when Bingham is firing people, the camera is mainly shot from the his point of view, showing his isolation with only the person he is firing. When the frames are shot in objective points of views, such as when Natalie and Bingham are arguing, it shows the distance between them, representing how Bingham is not close to anyone. I also feel that setting was an important aspect of the film. Every city that they would travel to would open up with a new shot of the city as it would look from an airplane. The constant change of setting relates to the constant change in Bingham's life, never giving him time to commit to anything other then his job. Overall this movie shows the struggle of workaholics being able to have normal relationships with people.