On the couch

Peter Madden reviews Up in the Air and Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day.

Up in the Air
Directed by: Jason Reitman
Starring: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman, JK Simmons

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
Directed by: Troy Duffy
Starring: Sean Patrick Flanery, Norman Reedus, Clifton Collins Jr, Julie Benz

My dad lost his job when I was about 15. The company he worked for folded in a not entirely unexpected corporate move and roughly 600 people were laid off.
When the day came, nobody like George Clooney’s character in Up In The Air was on hand to give him a speech about how he could move on and succeed after being let go. The Chin with the Grin didn’t inform him of his statuatory entitlements and obligations with a useful and all-encompassing information package.
Instead, about 30 people occupied the office for a few days before finally agreeing to leave under a garda escort.
This, in the business world occupied by smooth corporate hatchet man Ryan Bingham (Clooney), would be considered a bad thing. An escalation beyond what was desired or expected.
Director of Thank You For Smoking and Juno, Jason Reitman’s third feature film deals, as his other two did, with the nature of relationships and how they affect and are affected by the modern and constantly changing world we live in.
Criss-crossing the States like a corporate Cary Grant crossed with the Angel of Death, Bingham (Clooney) is the guy other companies call when they want to fire a bunch of employees.
Through his work, Bingham has amassed the sort of air mileage that would make NASA sit up and listen and, when not firing folk for a living, he trades in a mean line of motivational speaking that challenges people to cast off the shackles of possessions and personal relationships. These things slow you down and if you’re slow, you die, he argues.
His happy little world, consumed mostly with his goal of becoming only the seventh person to ever accumulate 10 million air miles, is turned on its ear when an upstart (Anna Kendrick) in his home office comes up with a plan that would see his particular job made obsolete. No more job – no more miles.
Bingham decides to take the enterprising upstart on the road to show her the error of her ways while simultaneously wrestling with a sense of growing attachment to his new occasional bedmate Alex (Vera Farmiga) and trying to avoid thinking about his sister’s upcoming wedding. Worlds collide, revelations happen and folsky pop music lilts as Reitman establishes Bingham’s cynical but seductively understandable world view and then breaks it down.
In the hands of another actor and director Bingham could’ve been just another movie jackass. But Clooney’s natural charisma and some excellent sidesteps in the script give the character just enough humanity to make you want him to learn something, not just get taught a lesson.
While Thank You For Smoking was also an hilarious, if slightly shallow, lampoon on the nature of American politics and the business forces that shape them and Juno was about attitudes to teen pregnancy, indy music and zingers, Reitman’s focus always seems firmly rooted on the idea of family  and Up in the Air is no different.
But instead of being schmaltzy or preachy, the director manages to hit that perfect note that makes you think about yourself – just a little bit – while keeping his focus on a entertaining, sometimes funny tale of modern man
While Clooney’s performance is key to the film being, not just believable, but tolerable, the rest of the cast – Kendrick and Farmiga particularly – are all well able to cope with both the comedic and dramatic requirements made of them.
Also popping up in smaller but hilarious cameos are Jason Bateman, JK Simmons and Zach Galifianakis.
In something that can only be described as a fugue state I also rented Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day this week.
I’m not sure why and I’m only vaguely aware of how. The original was a  low budget action affair that became a cult classic as much for its soundtrack as for anything else. (Think The Crow but without the vision and silly Oirish accents and Billy Connolly.)
Suffice it to say that you saw and loved the first one, you’ll love this. It’s ridiculous stuff but an honest to goodness entry into the top 10 list of films that are so bad they’re good.
When viewed through that prism, it’s almost a masterpiece.