"Isolated? I'm surrounded."
Ryan Bingham (Clooney) lives without personal connections. He travels the majority of the year, spending most of his time in the air and living out of a strategically packed suitcase. He dreads returning to his empty, white apartment in Omaha, Nebraska. He is further removed by his work, where he is forced to distance himself from people.
That's because I don't work here. I work for another company that lends me out to ******* like Steve's boss who don't have the balls to sack their own employees.
And spends all day giving people options for the future. He is content with life... and then everything changes.
During one of his travels, he meets a woman, Alex (Farmiga) who also travels often. They begin a casual relationship... planning rendezvouses whenever they are near each other. And then his boss, Craig Gregory (Bateman) takes the advice of the youngest member of the team, Natalie (Kendrick), who wants to save money by streamlining and using video conferences to fire clients.
Not what I was expecting. I like Jason Reitman's films... "Thank You For Smoking" and "Juno" were great, and this was critically acclaimed, but I didn't love it. I guess I wanted a little less ambiguity in the end... a clear cut ending, a nice wrap-up, but that isn't reality.
George Clooney has an effortless charm and that works here. It is hard to tell the difference between the actor and the character. His female costars, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, hold their own on screen, portraying strong women. Each of the three has an arc and changes your perceptions. Some of the people who were fired on film were recently laid off. It made these scenes more realistic... although some of the people fired are actors.
Good, but not excellent.
Up in the Air (2009) 108 minutes
Rating: R for language and some sexual content.
Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: George Clooney as Ryan Bingham
Vera Farmiga as Alex Goran
Anna Kendrick as Natalie Keener
Jason Bateman as Craig Gregory
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