This is a contender for my favorite film of the year so far.
I wasn't even sure it was my kind of movie. I was not that impressed with Jason Reitman's previous effort 'Thank You For Smoking', and some of Cooney's recent movies have left me underwhelmed, such as Men Who Stare at Goats, Michael Clayton and Syriana.
Clooney starts as a guy who works for a company who are hired to tell people they are being let go from their jobs, being made redundant. Rather than 'fire' their own staff, they hire these 'specialists' to do the job for them.
He travels from city to city, hardly ever going back home, practically living on planes and in airports. Yet he actually feels at home with this way of life, he prefers it to being settled down with a family in one place.
One of his goals is to reach the 10 million miles target, at which time he will apparently be given a sort of executive gold card that gives him free travel.
The sequences where he 'fires' people are quite powerful, and largely because they used non-actors that had recently been let go from their jobs. But there is underlying humour here also, though it is subtle rather than laugh-out-loud funny.
But Clooney's bubble is about to be burst, when a young female executive comes up with a plan to 'fire' people using video conferene links, thus saving the company millions in travel expenses. Clooney's character argues that the personal touch is very much needed and that it will not work, so he takes the girl on assignments with him to prove his point.
It is quirky, funny, emotional and captivating from start to finish. Cooney simply owns the film, his persona perfectly suits the character. He does feel for the people he has to break the bad news to, yet at the same time he is able to divorce himself from the events not let it bother his conscience.
The dvd also has a ton of deleted scenes that are practically a movie in themselves - all of them very good, but you can imagine they would have slowed the film down had they been left in.
What's also interesting is that Reitman originally planned to make a broader comedy, but when he was visiting corporate companies whilst doing research during the last year or so, he was shocked by seeing all these empty rooms with phones on the floor, no furniture etc as the companies had been downsized and people let go...and this changed his view of the story, and affected the overall tone of the film.
But as I say, though not broad comedy it does have some very funny moments, though subtle.
Highly recommended.
I wasn't even sure it was my kind of movie. I was not that impressed with Jason Reitman's previous effort 'Thank You For Smoking', and some of Cooney's recent movies have left me underwhelmed, such as Men Who Stare at Goats, Michael Clayton and Syriana.
Clooney starts as a guy who works for a company who are hired to tell people they are being let go from their jobs, being made redundant. Rather than 'fire' their own staff, they hire these 'specialists' to do the job for them.
He travels from city to city, hardly ever going back home, practically living on planes and in airports. Yet he actually feels at home with this way of life, he prefers it to being settled down with a family in one place.
One of his goals is to reach the 10 million miles target, at which time he will apparently be given a sort of executive gold card that gives him free travel.
The sequences where he 'fires' people are quite powerful, and largely because they used non-actors that had recently been let go from their jobs. But there is underlying humour here also, though it is subtle rather than laugh-out-loud funny.
But Clooney's bubble is about to be burst, when a young female executive comes up with a plan to 'fire' people using video conferene links, thus saving the company millions in travel expenses. Clooney's character argues that the personal touch is very much needed and that it will not work, so he takes the girl on assignments with him to prove his point.
It is quirky, funny, emotional and captivating from start to finish. Cooney simply owns the film, his persona perfectly suits the character. He does feel for the people he has to break the bad news to, yet at the same time he is able to divorce himself from the events not let it bother his conscience.
The dvd also has a ton of deleted scenes that are practically a movie in themselves - all of them very good, but you can imagine they would have slowed the film down had they been left in.
What's also interesting is that Reitman originally planned to make a broader comedy, but when he was visiting corporate companies whilst doing research during the last year or so, he was shocked by seeing all these empty rooms with phones on the floor, no furniture etc as the companies had been downsized and people let go...and this changed his view of the story, and affected the overall tone of the film.
But as I say, though not broad comedy it does have some very funny moments, though subtle.
Highly recommended.