Up in the Air (2009)

Stars: George Clooney and Anna Kendrick

Director: Jason Reitman

Plugs: Hilton, American Airlines

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) the main character in the new film Up in the Air, leads a comfortably detached existence. His happily rootless life is working for a company that fires employees for other companies. Ryan can be seen as the average employee’s worst nightmare: a stranger who shows up one day and fires them with a canned speech for no particular reason. He’s got a dirty job to do, but he’s not to blame for the layoffs. The employees are going to be laid off with or without Ryan; he’s just the messenger. He flits between major cities, his life confined to his suitcase and devoid of any significant personal attachments.

All is well until a young upstart named Natalie is brought into the office with plans to revolutionize the profession by firing people via telecommunication. This will save significantly on travel expenses, and of course make Ryan’s job obsolete. The pair soon travels together as Ryan shows her the ropes, and strikes up a road romance with a fellow corporate vagabond named Alex (Anna Kendrick).

In a scene reminiscent of American Psycho, Ryan and Alex compare their corporate credit cards and perks plans. Both are turned on by financial power (and its exercise), and the sophomoric, innuendo-laced pseudocorporate banter is clearly foreplay. Ryan is soon forced to face not only with struggling to save his own job, but—perhaps more terrifyingly—the prospect of settling down to a committed relationship.

The performances are excellent all around. George Clooney’s performance as Ryan Bingham is one of the best of his career, and the supporting actors are fantastic. Many of the film’s details are perfect: the stupid corporate slogans, the slimy “comfort” of hotel life and airport VIP lounges, the petty corporate perks that such people prize because they have no real life.

In a few places, Up in the Air has trouble staying aloft, and is at times predictable and unbelievable. For example, the film takes pains to show us how smart and savvy Ryan is. His whole life is travel and airport and hotel lounges—and the denizens found therein. Yet it never occurs to him that Alex, his beautiful, smart, and sexy gem of a part-time corporate lover, might have someone else in her life? In all their playdates and days and nights together, he never asked, and the subject never came up? This might be believable in a naïve twelve year old boy, but not in a seasoned veteran of corporate travel.

The film tries to be (and is to some degree is successful at) being a commentary on America’s social and economic climate. Americans are afraid of losing their jobs and families, and, allegedly, are less connected to each other. (Frankly I’m not convinced that Americans are any more socially isolated now than they were five, ten, or twenty years ago; the idea that things were better—or people were closer—in earlier years is a bit of false nostalgia.)

Director Reitman included several non-actor extras in the film, real-life laid off workers who are fired in the film. This adds authenticity, but still there’s something slightly phony about a major Hollywood film whose cast and crew are making millions of dollars cinematically sharing the pain of America’s unemployed workers. Despite a few flaws, Up in the Air is a very good film with keen insights into love, life, and modern times.