Michael Clayton

From the screenwriter of The Bourne trilogy, Tony Gilroy, comes this wonderful law-thirller “Michael Clayton” (2007). This movie is Gilroy’s first as a director although he has been responsible for writting about half a dozen screenplayes – at the moment Gilroy is filming his second movie as a director “Duplicity” to be released next year.

But back to Michael Clayton: this is a slow pase highly intriguing thriller around a corporate law firm and one of the action suits its running. The movie is not your typical action movie, and might appear too slow for some, even the one explosion in the movie is surrounded by a silient landscape and leaves you thinking rather than drawn into a rat race of car chases, accidents, murders and other action scenes other thrillers normally show you. Not Michael Clayton. This movie, although highly intriguing, is about moral and the choices we make in live.

Michael Clayton is an in-house fixer at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach, & Ledeen’s dirtiest work at the behest of the firm’s co-founder, Marty Bach. Though burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture, and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class-action suit that Clayton’s firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach’s brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life.

The acting of the whole cast for this 7 Oscars nominated movie is great. Especially Clooney, Tilda Swinton (who actually won the Oscar for best supporting role) and Tom Wilkinson are all superb and its always great to see Pollack in action. I highly enjoyed watching this movie and recommend it to anyone who wants to be intrigued by suspense, realism and moral conflict.

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Blood diamond

I was very impressed by the story and background setting, the civil war and chaos in the 1990’s in Sierra Leone, Africa, of “Blood Diamond” (“Diamante de sangre“) (2007) by director Edward Zwick with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Ntare Mwine.

The acting of the characters is good, and the violance in the movie is justified to give an accurate representation of the circumstances at the time in Sierra Leone and really help to bring accross the movie’s message. I highly recommend watching this movie if you want to learn a bit more about the conflicts around diamonds in Africa.

Blood Diamond is the story of Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) – an ex mercenary from Zimbabwe – and Solomon Vandy (Ntare Mwine) – a Mende fisherman. Both men are African, but their histories as different as any can be, until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives. While in prison for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon – who was taken from his family and forced to work in the diamond fields – has found and hidden the extraordinary rough stone. With the help of Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist whose idealism is tempered by a deepening connection with Archer, the two men embark on a trek through rebel territory, a journey that could save Solomon’s family and give Archer the second chance he thought he would never have.

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