Three themes / story lines

Rating: Null/10 (6 March 2010)

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) has the worst job possible, not physically (such as autopsy assistant) but mentally – he flies to any US city where a corporation needs a professional expert to fire its employee(s) face-to-face. Well, physically too for people who abhor flying, as this job requires spending a huge amount of time on a plane. To Ryan, however, this is paradise. He enjoys living out of a suitcase; a flight cabinet is home to him. He also has the mental maturity and toughness to handle, sometimes on an hourly basis, people in all sorts of emotional distress, breakdown or outburst imaginable. While to lesser beings this sort of experience would be devastating, to Ryan it is just a day in the office. So he carries on merrily, until two women enter his life, separately but almost simultaneously.
My summary line mentions three themes. I'll start with the least significant, the modern lifestyle of frequent flying. As mentioned, Ryan enjoys everything about it – his own efficient system of packing and getting through security lines, as well as the special attention he gets at air terminals as a frequent flyer. His one big ambition is to reach 10 million miles when he will become the 7th person (if nobody beats him to it) in the world to receive that special, elite card, delivered by the captain during the flight right at his seat (hope the co-pilot is good). He also shares a special empathy with people in the same boat (sorry, should be same plane), one of whom is Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), a charming, sophisticated, intelligent avid business woman met in a chance encounter (in a hotel lounge) which develops into in series of romantic rendezvous whenever their schedules reveal a convergence in a city. This is casual, sophisticated, no-string-attached romance that both enjoy.
Another theme is the cruel corporate reality of letting people go. When the economy gets bad, Ryan's boss Craig Gregory (a pitch-perfect Jason Bateman) beams. But the company faces the problem of steeply rising travelling cost. In comes Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), Stanford fresh grad and overachiever, with a revolutionary proposal of doing all the firing over the computer. Craig recalls all his people on the road to hear her presentation and wants to give it a try. Ryan manages to convince Craig that despite her psychology major, Natalie may not understand the business of dealing with people face-to-face. Craig's reply is to send Natalie out on a road trip with Ryan. So there is the other woman who stumbles into his life. While there is no romance in this relationship, it is not unlike the mentor-protégé rapport between Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdam's characters in "State of play" (2009) that starts with animosity but gradually evolves into mutual respect.
The last of the three themes brings to mind another movie, "About a boy" (2002), the no-man-is-an-island aspect of it anyway. In that movie, Hugh Grant's character locks himself up in his own castle of a home, enjoying his own secluded existence. In a way, Ryan is like that – although he has more than an average share of daily interaction with other human beings, his is emotionally an island. After observing the romantic undercurrent between Ryan and Alex, Natalie accuses him of hiding in his "cocoon of self-banishment". He is, however, not a complete island. He has two sisters with whom he still has infrequent contact. The wedding of the younger one brings about a family reunion to which he invites Alex to go as his date. From this wedding subplot comes a plot development that is predictable but also a small twist.
Strung by the motifs of satellite shots of a parade of cities in the US, the three story lines develop in parallel and also criss-cross. Wisely restraining from over-dramatization, the movie lets the story tell themselves. Clooney, who in his maturity has come to resemble more and more Cary Grant, turns in a performance that is good enough to win him about half-a-dozen minor awards (but not the big ones like Golden Globe or BAFTA). While nominated, he is unlikely to win Oscar when there is a strong front-runner like Jeff Bridges. Both Farmiga and Kendric have done exceedingly well and earned well-deserved nominations in Oscar (as well as Golden Globe, Screen Actors' Guild and BAFTA) but will probably share Clooney's fate. As mentioned, Jason Bateman is marvellous in this movie. Other supports include veterans such as J. K. Simmons and Elliott.