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Title: Up In The Air
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, strong language and sexuality makes this one for adults. Recommended for ages 17 and up. |
Ryan Bingham (Academy Award-winner George Clooney) is a lonely, isolated man. He might not appear so on the outside, but spend some time with him and you’ll see what I mean. He is the protagonist in Jason Reitman’s latest film “Up In The Air,” a movie that will be mistaken by most people for being about the depressing economy but is more about human relationships then job security. Not that Ryan has any disillusions about job security. His job is to go to company firms and fire their employees. Yes, you heard me: Ryan is a fire for hire. Companies hire him because their CEO’s and bosses are too scared to fire their own employees. Ryan does this because he lives an isolated life and needs something to fill it with.
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In this case he has a dream of racking up 10,000,000 frequent flyer miles to join an exclusive club. Though it may sound silly to us as he tells one of his co-workers later in the film “more people have walked on the moon.” It’s not that he intends to use those miles, it’s that getting them makes him feel important. His life takes on a different meaning when in an ironic twist of fate his job is in jeopardy of being downsized to computers. The person who is developing this new program that will take his job is Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, featured in a much better performance here then in “Twilight: New Moon”). Natalie is unfamiliar with how humans react to such news, and thus must follow Ryan around to see how he fires people.
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Not only is Natalie unprepared for how the real firing world works but (the double irony) she’s dumped via a text message from her boyfriend. This is where the movie begins to show what it’s really about: Life and how people live it. The people in this movie are all either lonely, depressed, or searching for something. Ryan has a nice job and lots of frequent flyer points, but one trip home to his empty apartment reminds him how little human relationships he has. Natalie feels life is worth living and marriage is a goal to strive for, but how does she find purpose when her true goal is life has been suddenly and abruptly pulled from her? Rounding up the cast is Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), who serves as a new love interest to Ryan.
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She appears to have life all figured out, but there are a few secrets she’s hiding as well. These are all fascinating people to watch. They have real lives, problems, and dreams. Some of the dreams may be shallow in nature, but you have to live for something right? Like his previous two movies “Thank You For Smoking” and “Juno,” Reitman shows that he is a great film director in the making. His movies show subtlety and layers and complexity. Even when the dialog is sometimes self-indulgent the people still speak straight to the viewers heart. Though people may initially walk away from this movie with the depressing economy touching them the most, a few years later when the recession has halted this will be viewed as a great modern character study. One that the likes of Billy Wilder would have been proud of.
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