My knapsack is empty
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) executes the details of his travel routine with
the dispatch that befits a man who flew 350,000 miles during the past year. He
speedwalks to the heads of lines, spends time in elite airline clubs, steps
deftly in and out of his shoes, and settles repeatedly into the first class
seats that are his home for most of the year. Ryan works for a company that
hires itself out to corporations that are downsizing. He is an expert in the art
of firing people. “We take people at their most fragile and we set them adrift,”
he says. “It’s what we do.” Yes, that’s exactly what he does, and he’s the
perfect man for the job.
Ryan loves
his life of blank hotel rooms and same style planes. “My knapsack is empty.” He
has no person, no place that means anything to him. He has a distant sister and
nearly ten million airline miles. While we watch, he will become the seventh man
to break that mark, and it means a great deal to him. He rejects the
complications suggested by the possibility of marriage, house, and kids and
celebrates the perks that accrue to a champion mileage collector.
In a hotel
bar he meets his match in Alex (Vera Farmiga). Immediately, we slot Alex as the
force that will turn Ryan around by introducing him to the benefits of having a
co-pilot in life. But in this complex, sometimes profound movie, things are not
that simple. Alex is more than his match; she is a fellow sky warrior – “I’m the
woman you don’t have to worry about.” So settle in to watch an updated version
of those wonderful movies from the 1930s – Hepburn and Tracy, Russell and Grant.
Or is that really what this is about?
For Ryan,
every flight ends in a confrontation with employees who have been outsourced for
termination by CEOs too gutless to do the dirty deed themselves. His perfect
life is upended with the arrival of Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a newbie with a big
idea: let’s fire them remotely, by computer. The terminated employees losing
their livelihoods turn out to real people who have been downsized in real life.
Ryan stands out in garish primary colors.
American
Airlines and Hilton Hotels will be grateful to director Jason Reitman for
showing a good side of air travel in an era when flying has become the dog of
contemporary travel. The rapid fire comedy that unfolds between Clooney and
Farmiga is new fangled and satisfying; the cool persona he has fashioned for
himself as a successful head lopper ultimately raises big questions about flying
solo and being the instrument of destruction and despair for hundreds of human
beings. Mixing comedy and pathos in one movie is a risky business; this time
around, it poses the question: if an empty backpack means an empty soul, what
exactly does that person deserve?
Copyright (c) Illusion