Up In The Air, starring George Clooney, is a modern-Hollywood film done just right. Capturing the lost romance of air travel and the isolation of a man married to his routine, the film is a smart and surprising potluck analysis of modern issues, relationships and loneliness, without preachiness. Already named the best film of 2009 by the National Board of Review, Up In The Air is a good fit for most folks who've been around long enough to know that the only fairy tales that exist are the ones we create for ourselves.
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a casual corporate executioner with a life that exists almost entirely in the sky, and obsessed with the perks of his frequent travels. Each day, Ryan walks into a different office somewhere in the United States Las Vegas, Wichita, Detroit, St. Louis and so on - and is handed a list of employees who are about to be downsized. One by one, he sits opposite each of them, bringing them the bad news that their bosses are too wimpy to deliver personally.
Ryan's doe-eyed personal touch is what makes him so good at his job, reassuring the newly unemployed that opportunities await, that this is a beginning not an ending, and so on. He's perfected the art of the gentle let-down to the point where he's also made a name for himself on the motivational-speaker circuit - and yes, he's that good. Elevated detachment is his forte, and nobody does it better.
From his frequent travels, Ryan's got a dozen elite passcards to a dozen airport VIP lounges, boutique car rental joints and high-end hotels. All this is threatened, however, when an ambitious, no-nonsense employee at his company develops an idea to take Ryan and his ilk off the road and, rather than spending 322 days a year personally ruining people's lives, he and so many like him could save the company millions by doing firings via webcam. Naturally, this is the kiss of death for Ryan, who would be forced to give up the convenient life of frequent flyer perks and interpersonal insulation. And naturally, he revolts.
Forced out on the road with the task of training the woman trying to replace him, Bingham puts his pupil through the meat grinder of personal devastation that comes with firing someone face-to-face instead of over a computer. These lessons are learned parallel to Ryan learning a lesson or two of his own from a woman he meets in a hotel bar (where else?) and immediately falls for. Could it be her beauty, or the fact that she's got almost as many miles and elite passcards as he does? A bit of both, perhaps, but his entire life philosophy is thrown for a loop when he realizes that the life of settling down and normality that he's avoided his entire life is suddenly very appealing.
Nothing is ever quite what it seems, however, and the story that unfolds as Ryan falls in love and attempts to keep from becoming an outdated model of corporate efficiency is poetically told and cinematically seductive. Clooney's perfect for the role, and it's not hard to see why the film's already raking in awards.
CraveOnline's Rating: 8 out of 10
