Michael Clay­ton is a that rare thing: an intel­li­gent, fic­tional thriller for grownups. Like any self-respecting Thriller for Grownups, it’s relent­lessly grim in tone, the chronol­ogy is frac­tured, and a high level of detail demands your atten­tion. It doesn’t approach impen­e­tra­bil­ity like Syr­i­ana, but it unfor­tu­nately doesn’t engage the brain as much as a good puz­zler could. Every­thing is spelled out for the viewer in the end, except for a few nig­gling logis­ti­cal ques­tions. (Such as, why would two expert assas­sins opt for some­thing so mess­ily con­spic­u­ous as a car bomb?)

Shiva the god­dess of death

Michael Clay­ton has all the whiff of being based on a true story, but is in fact a wholly orig­i­nal work from writer/director Tony Gilroy — his first film as direc­tor after a suc­cess­ful run of screen­plays includ­ing the Bourne tril­ogy. George Clooney car­ries the film with the com­plex, com­pro­mised title char­ac­ter, and Oscar win­ner Tilda Swin­ton sweats con­vinc­ingly as a dying-inside cor­po­rate exe­cu­tioner. But in my mind the real star is Tom Wilkinson.

Don’t sweat the small stuff

Offi­cial movie site: michaelclayton.warnerbros.com

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

•