Up in the Air is a topical look into the world of corporate downsizing. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a fire-for-hire professional whose job it is to fly from company to company terminating employees. He hates being at home and he’s obsessed with ranking up as many frequent flyer miles as possible. It’s tough to say what he likes about his job. When his firm brings in recent college grad Natalie (Anna Kendrick) to revolutionize the way they do business, Ryan tries to convince his boss that firing people over the internet is crazy. Does Ryan really have compassion for the people he’s firing? Or does he just want to stay out on the road? I suppose it’s a little of both.
He gets to stay out on the road for a while longer, as he now must show the newcomer how to actually perform the job properly. As Ryan and Natalie travel from city to city, the film unfolds as a mature buddy comedy with all the fixings of real-life drama. Natalie is dumped by her boyfriend via text message (irony abound), Ryan starts a relationship with beautiful fellow road warrior Alex (Vera Farmiga) while trying to appease his sister’s request to take pictures for his other sister’s upcoming wedding. They crash parties and breakdown emotionally. And fire a lot of people.
The scenes where Ryan and Natalie must inform employees that they no longer have a job can be exhausting. These are people who have worked for their companies for ten, twenty, or thirty years, and their bosses don’t even have the courtesy to fire them themselves. In one particular scene, we see how Ryan addresses an employee portrayed by J.K. Simmons, and we see how he’s perfected his technique to allow these people to continue their lives. “This is a wake-up call,” he says, “a rebirth.”
Up in the Air is director Jason Reitman’s third film, his previous two being Thank You For Smoking and Juno. Reitman is always in command of his story, and it’s clear that his passion is for character. In the film’s best scene, Ryan takes a trip to Chicago. In no more than a few minutes, we learn so much about the characters. In total, Up in the Air is what many films aspire to be. It mixes comedy and drama into a relatively well-balanced story. Jason Reitman is one of Hollywood’s gifted young directors, and I look forward to seeing truly great films from him in the future.
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