Clooney on thrill ride in "Michael Clayton"

  George Clooney poses as he arrives for the screening of his film 'Michael Clayton'
at the 33nd American film festival of Deauville September 2, 2007.[Reuters]  

For the past seven years, screenwriter Tony Gilroy meticulously has constructed the "Bourne" trilogy, the superb series that sees amnesia victim Matt Damon dashing through increasingly thrilling episodes to discover his identity is basically a bad guy.

In "Michael Clayton," Gilroy's directing debut, which he also wrote, he reduces his formula to a single film: The eponymous Michael Clayton hurries -- dashes would be too strong a word -- through increasingly dangerous episodes to learn what he probably already knows -- that by doing the dirty work of pond scum he is little more than a bad guy himself.

As with the "Bourne" films, Gilroy has a knack for creating strong characters and situations that resonate with tension. It may be formula, but the guy is a solid chemist, as he crafts excellent set-ups and payoffs. He has mastered those "ah-hah" moments when everything locks into place. With Oscar-anointed George Clooney heading a cast of actors who love to roll up their sleeves to dig into their roles, "Clayton" should perform well above average for Warner Bros.

Maybe all large corporate law firms have guys like Michael. He calls himself a "janitor." He is a lawyer, but his "niche" -- as the Manhattan firm's co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack) so delicately puts it -- is to clean up messes by the firm's motley clients.

While driving back from a cleaning job in upstate New York, Michael unaccountably stops on a lonely road to observe a trio of horses. (This unaccountably is one of several plot holes.) Suddenly, his car blows up. Someone has tried to kill him!

Backtrack four days. Near the conclusion of a six-year class-action suit against an agrochemical client, the firm's top litigator, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), who is on the road and about to pull off a pretrial settlement, suffers a movie attorney meltdown. You know, the kind real-life lawyers never have. Yet here, like Al Pacino in " . . . And Justice for All," Arthur discovers that his client is guilty as hell and wants to make amends. A manic-depressive and off his meds, he is switching sides. He is also behaving strangely -- he performs a striptease during a deposition.

Michael rushes to the Midwest to rescue mad Arthur from lockup. Arthur slips from his custody and gets back to Manhattan, where he holes up in his loft and makes surreptitious phone calls to a female plaintive.

Meanwhile, Michael's own life is in free fall. A serious gambling addict, he has decided to bet instead on a restaurant venture, which his alcoholic brother has run into the ground. He owes $75,000 to some apparent bad guys and makes a devil's bargain to turn the Arthur situation around for a bailout by the firm.

The agrochemical company's chief counsel Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), so anxious and overwhelmed by her knowledge of the firm's culpability and, by implication, her own shortcomings, panics. She hires shady characters to take care of loose cannon Arthur. After this much more noxious type of cleaning job, the shady characters can't help noticing Michael snooping around to learn the truth behind his friend's demise. Thus, the maladroit car bomb.

All of this cloak-and-dagger melodrama is designed to make Michael question what kind of man he has become in the firm's "niche." "What are you?" Arthur asks. "You know exactly what you are," spits his cop brother in another scene.

A question you might ask yourself: Why a car bomb? Isn't that rather clumsy and attention-seeking in the midst of a delicate legal settlement? And why on earth do the hoods stake out the sealed loft of the deceased?

Funnily enough, you ask these questions only after the credits roll. Until then, you are genuinely caught up in the thriller. Gilroy proves a decent director of his own literary inventions. He trusts his actors, and they return the favor with solid characterizations down even to small roles.

A clutch of major directors who signed on to produce -- Pollack, Steven Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella -- make sure Gilroy is surrounded by pros: Cinematographer Robert Elswit keeps things crisp and immaculate. Designer Kevin Thompson makes every set and location an eye-grabber. James Newton Howard never intrudes with his score but keeps the tension subtly building. And Gilroy's own editor-brother John has stitched nicely together the often-complex scenes.

Cast:

Michael Clayton: George Clooney

Arthur Edens: Tom Wilkinson

Karen Crowder: Tilda Swinton

Marty Bach: Sydney Pollack

Barry Grissom: Michael O'Keefe

Don Jefferies: Ken Howard

Screenwriter-director: Tony Gilroy; Producers: Sydney Pollack, Jennifer Fox, Steve Samuels, Kerry Orent; Executive producers: Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, James Hold, Anthony Minghella; Director of photography: Robert Elswit; Production designer: Kevin Thompson; Music: James Newton Howard; Costume designer: Sarah Edwards; Editor: John Gilroy.