Based on the novel by Walter Kirn, George Clooney stars as corporate downsizing expert Ryan Bingham, who is hired to help ease the transition of long-term employees to the unemployment line across the country.
He takes his job very seriously and loves the 290 days away from home. The only problem is the 70 days at home which he has to spend in his empty apartment. One fine day his world turns upside-down when a young upstart in the company threatens to ground the company by firing people via the internet.
Not standing for a change in his life, nor the chance for his life goal of total airline miles to end, he goes on a mission to prove how personal his job is. He realizes how key a face to face meeting can be to talk down an emotionally unstable person and really do the victim a service in an otherwise horrible moment in his life.
Clooney’s Bingham is the loner businessman whose only relationships exist from random meetings with attractive females at the multiple airports he frequents. His wallet of plastic has become his life.
Credit cards from airlines that accumulate his mileage, hotel status perk cards that let him cut the disgruntled travelers and go straight to the front, and numerous room keys that never seem to be thrown out, causing him to always use more than one before finally opening his hotel suite’s door.
Detached from his family for years as the brother that exists but cannot be counted on for anything, he contemplates whether he should, or really wants to, attend his sister’s wedding-the little girl of the family and someone he should have been involved with after the passing of their father.
A series of style cramping incidents for him begins with a phone call from his other sister and the request to take a cardboard cutout of the happy couple. Then comes the threat of being taken out of the air, his home for decades, in order to impersonally let go more people more efficiently; the challenge of taking Natalie on his next schedule of jobs to prove to her why the new system won’t work; and the addition of a love interest in Vera Farmiga’s Alex.
The real success story of the film is a performance from Clooney who really knocks this on out of the park. He always showed the charisma and chops to play confident and successful, but here is allowed to also branch out and express the pent-up frustration that comes with isolated loneliness.
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