Flying High

From the moment he had his pick of roles, George Clooney has shied away from heroes (perhaps Batman & Robin had something to do with it) and gravitated toward thieves, spooks, shady lawyers, and other assorted lowlifes, relying on his raffish. Old Hollywood charm to tease the nobility out of each. In Up in the Air. he plays another admirable antihero, Ryan Bingham, a firer-for-hire, flown in by spineless managers to execute their layoffs for them. It’s a testament both to his skill and to the sadly increasing demand for his services that he is close to reaching his goal of 10 million air miles.

His complacent, cruise-control life hits unexpected turbulence with the arrival of two women. One is a fellow frequent flier (Vera Farmiga), with whom he enters into an intermittent—and comfortably uncommitted—love affair at various airport Hiltons. The other is a flinty, ambitious young colleague (Anna Kendrick), whose plan to fire people by teleconference threatens the dignity of Bingham's profession, and his air-mile dreams. Both story lines scintillate—Clooney has a Tracy-Hepburn chemistry with Farmiga and a Cary Grant-Rosalind Russell discord with Kendrick—though it's frustrating that they barely intersect. A lot has changed in the eight years since Walter Kirn wrote the novel upon which director Jason Reitman's movie is based. For one thing, the world has become more connected—meaning less connected. For another, the unemployment rate has doubled. Both shifts give the film a gloss of relevance that elevates it beyond the otherwise agreeable jaunt that it is.

JULIAN SANCTON