The Second Last Movie I Saw

It's not often that I see something on the big screen that I've never really seen before (and for me, bigger and louder explosions hardly count in that regard). Jason Reitman's Up In the Air is definitely in that category. The closest comparison I can think of is Bill Forsyth's Local Hero which also addresses how a seemingly content modern man can be seduced by more traditional notions of love and community. But in Forsyth's film, the affected character is shown to actually be spiritually adrift and consequently primed for the revelations that occur when he encounters the simple life. That's not so much the case with this film's Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) who seems entirely at home on the road he travels in his job as a corporate hatchet man. What really makes this different is that he is clearly a mostly decent guy-- his job notwithstanding-- who actually operates under a well-defined social code. Superficially, he is selfish in many ways, but not to the degree that he fails to respect the people he deals with (professionally and personally) and is capable of rising to a kind of nobility when circumstances dictate. Clooney is so good at projecting a nice guy image, that he generates a fair amount of sympathy right off the bat, but I think the script and direction make clear that this is more than a quirk of casting. The point of teis story is that even in the most unlikely context-- like when a stranger is hired to terminate loyal and likely still productive employees-- there's room for a measure of human decency to define the nature of the exchange. For a film in today's market to build its plot around such a (sadly) esoteric theme is actually kind of brave, though obviously Clooney's star power made it an easier sell. Here's hoping the success of this film prompts a trend toward more sophisticated films, and isn't just a momentary exception.