Yesterday evening I watched Michael Clayton. It is a good film, but not a great film; certainly not a film that deserves an Oscar nomination. I would rate Eastern Promises and American Gangster several notches higher and both of them do not figure in this year’s nominations.

Michael Clayton is about the mess in the morals and ethics of the American legal system or for that matter anywhere in the world, where the moneyed rich always try to hush up the truth, whatever it may take that to do. The premise of the film cannot be faulted, but the execution is flawed.

Michael Clayton is supposed to be going through a personal crisis, but George Clooney, who essays the role, wearing a deadpan expression for most of the film, is unable to project it with conviction. Now that is not great acting, is it? Yet he has surprisingly earned an Oscar. One of the big failures of the film is that we can’t empathize with any of the characters; not with Clayton’s good friend who suffers a mental breakdown on learning the truth of the product of an agrochemical company that he is defending in a billion dollar class suit. The lady CEO of the company, a Simi Garewal look alike, sweats in her armpits when she is hatching her sinister plots, but leaves us cold.

The editor of the film seems to be overly obsessed with his craft. During the transitions the soundtrack precedes the scene, a ploy that is very effective in breathlessly paced thrillers, but jarring in a film like this. And there are those back and forth cuts between the CEO rehearsing her lines in front of a mirror and actually giving an interview to the television channel. It is plain irritating.

The director needlessly tries to dramatize the storytelling instead of sticking to the good old-fashioned narration. The lengthy flashback and then the epilogue were unwarranted. What do we make of those three horses? Metaphors and metaphysics clearly have no place in a film like this. The politically correct ending leaves an uncomfortable feeling as you walk out after 120 minutes.

But all this should take nothing away from the fact that Michael Clayton is a good film, one that deserves to be seen for its subject matter.