Michael Clayton (film)

Michael Clayton is a 2007 American legal thriller film written and directed by Tony Gilroy, starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton and Sydney Pollack. Loosely based on the multinational corporation Monsanto, the film chronicles the attempts by attorney Michael Clayton to cope with a colleagues apparent mental breakdown and the corruption and intrigue surrounding a major client of his law firm being sued in a class action case over the effects of toxic agrochemicals.

Michael Clayton George Clooney is a fixer for a prestigious New York City law firm, using his connections and knowledge of legal loopholes for clients benefit. After leaving an underground poker game and dealing with a wealthy clients Denis OHare hit and run, Michael drives despondently and stops at a remote field, where some horses are standing on a hill. As he climbs the hill to admire them, the car explodes behind him.The film then moves back to four days earlier. Michael is 75,000 in debt from a restaurant investment he entered with his brother Timmy, which collapsed when Timmy used the restaurants funds to fuel his drug habits. Michael, having gone to a loan shark to raise the money, refuses to give up his brother and is held responsible for the debt, given one week to come up with the money. Meanwhile, one of the firms leading attorneys, Arthur Edens Tom Wilkinson, has a psychotic breakdown in the middle of a deposition in Milwaukee involving a class action lawsuit against UNorth, an agricultural products conglomerate. Michael arrives in Milwaukee and bails Arthur, who had failed to take his antipsychotic medication, out of jail, but he escapes from their hotel room in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, Karen Crowder Tilda Swinton, UNorths general counsel, discovers that Arthur had come into possession of a confidential UNorth document detailing the companys decision to manufacture a weed killer it knew to be carcinogenic. Karen brings this to the attention of UNorths CEO Ken Howard, who puts her in contact with two men secretly on retainer Robert Prescott and Terry Serpico. She contracts them to follow Arthur and bug his apartment and phone. When they report that Arthur is building a case to expose his own client, Karen has them murder Arthur in such a way as to make it look like a druginduced heart attack. ........

Source: Wikipedia