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Amazon.co.uk Review
Up in the Air transforms some painful subjects into smart, sly comedy--with just enough of the pain underneath to give it some weight. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) spends most of his days traveling around the country and firing people; he's hired by bosses who don't have the nerve to do their layoffs themselves. His life of constant flight suits him--he wants no attachments. But two things suddenly threaten his vacuum-sealed world: his company decides to do layoffs via video conference so they don't have to pay for travel, and Bingham meets a woman named Alex (Vera Farmiga, The Departed), who seems to be the female version of him… and of course, he starts to fall in love. Writer-director Jason Reitman is building a career from funny but thoughtful movies about compromised people--a pregnant teen in Juno, a cigarette-company executive in Thank You for Smoking. George Clooney has a gift for playing smart men who aren't quite as smart as they think they are (Michael Clayton, Out of Sight). The combination is perfect: Bingham is charming and sympathetic but clearly missing something, and Up in the Air captures that absence with clarity and compassion. The outstanding supporting cast includes Anna Kendrick (Rocket Science), Jason Bateman (Arrested Development), Danny McBride (Pineapple Express), Melanie Lynskey (Away We Go), and others, each small part pitched exactly right.--Bret Fetzer
Special Features
- Commentary by writer/director Jason Reitman, director of photography Eric Steelberg and first assistant director Jason blumenfield
- Shadowplay: Before The Story
- Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Jason Reitman: > To Know Me is To Fly With Me
- Trailers
> Real People Firing and Irate Employee
> Thumper and Extended Boat Scene
> Omaha Montage
> Spacesuit
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
George Clooney shows something he has never shown before. vulnerability,
By
This review is from: Up In The Air [DVD] (DVD)
"Up in the Air" manages to be funny, poignant, and troubling, often all at once. It's a film about people, jobs, and the fulfillment that these things do or do not bring. It's also director Jason Reitman's most mature and even film so far in his career.Protagonist Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) constantly flies from city to city to fire people. When a boss is too cowardly to let his/her employees go, Bingham steps in with his sleek suits and ominous "new opportunity" brochures. Like Aaron Eckhart's tobacco spokesman in Reitman's "Thank You For Smoking," Clooney's Bingham is superb at what he does. From his cleanly efficient airport behavior to his awe-inspiring firing routines, Bingham is a force of nature; Clooney captures his bravado perfectly. The plot really opens when Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a young upstart, introduces a new system to Bingham's company; firing sessions will now take place through a Skype-like video conferencing system. An outraged Bingham has no choice but to take Natalie along with him for his next round of sessions, so that he can "show her the ropes." The plot lifts off at this point, with some turbulence and some twists along the way. "Up in the Air" works primarily because of its performances and its script. Clooney sells Bingham unquestionably as a loner who loves to travel. Bingham seeks fulfillment through the collection of Frequent Flyer miles and premium membership cards, but his vision becomes cloudy when a love interest enters the picture. As Bingham's potential soul-mate, Alex, Vera Farmiga is bold, funny, and mysterious. She has a Lauren Bacall sensibility, along with a unique sort of beauty. Yet, the heart and soul of the film is Anna Kendrick. As the film's most dynamic character, Kendrick is totally convincing and compelling. For Bingham, she becomes a wrench in the works. She seems to know her character so well that she truly becomes her for 100 minutes. For its first seventy minutes or so, "Up in the Air" is a charming romantic/career/teacher-student- comedy. It's hilarious and smart. The rest of the film is a bit darker; it forces characters to step out of the terminal and confront reality (that's as specific as I'll be). While there are still funny moments, the movie becomes more of a drama. Both the mostly-comedic and the mostly-dramatic segments work wonderfully, and the tonal shift feels wholly organic and inevitable. "Up in the Air" is a great film, with great dialogue and great acting.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing is better than roots,
By
This review is from: Up In The Air [DVD] (DVD)
A very strange film that proposes no way out in the crisis situation which is part of everyday life in the USA: firing and getting fired. Today quite a few businesses have outsourced the processing of these firing procedures. So a business specialized in firing people comes into the picture to do it properly, to make limbos presentable and hell palatable, heaven-like if you want, with some nice words and a lot of mind manipulation.These professional firers are plane people who can fly nearly 320 days a year and spend exactly 7 times 24 hours boarding planes in one year. They have very strict requirements about traveling light and traveling on light and flexible wheels. Home is airports all over the USA, some day all over the world. And they learn how to live with light sushi, and accepting or refusing a "cancer" when the stewardess proposes them "a can, sir". They thus learn how to wrap up horror and death on a slow fire and so many other evils in the shiny suits of rebirth, a new beginning, an opportunity to excel in a new field of creativity. They forget the suffering they are going to create or even the death they are peddling day after day, be it jumping from a bridge, or slow poisoning on alcohol, or just triggering some fire arm. But on the other side the younger ones out of Cornell University or some other high-rise higher education schools are just developing a new technique based on the Internet and communication tools and technologies to dehumanize firing by making direct contact, even be it only eye contact, impossible since two screens, two cameras, two mikes, two modems and a telephone line are between the firer and the firee. That's what they are told and taught in these deluxe schools that can wrap any crap in gold to make us think it is a nugget or a piece of chocolate. But Clooney brings another dimension in his airport ever perambulating home: that is to say just not being alone. Of course in those terminals and in those planes you can always find some human contact, be it purely professional and paid for, or be it some person casually met in a bar or restaurant, or for the more deprived be it only a chambermaid, or as for that a chamber-"valet" or plain janitor. But he shows us how at one moment in this life the traveler will want some more permanent or regular contact and meeting. But that is nothing but an appearance meeting an appearance and hell it is for the one who believes this appearance, on this side or on the other side, is the real thing. Harder will the fall be, and harder is the fall. A small film showing the total artificiality and somewhere absurdity of that civilization based on transience and mobility and rootless-ness and professional distance and non-empathy. Cruel but absurd. Samuel Beckett at its highest acme. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved this film,
By
This review is from: Up In The Air [DVD] (DVD)
I was very surprised by this film. George Clooney is fantastic in it and the film is much more insightful than one would expect. It's a very good potrait of the life of a businessman on the road, although taken to the extreme. Good take on life of a 40 something single man who does not believe in convential life.
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