(2009) Charming road warrior Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) works for a company that sends him out from the home office in Omaha to fire people for other companies that haven't the balls to face their own employees when terminating them. "To know me is to fly with me," Ryan tells us by way of introduction.

Additionally he's paid for motivational speaking engagements - "What's in Your Backpack?" - asking the audience, "How much does your life weigh?" before dispensing advice to simplify by discarding everything unnecessary because "we weigh ourselves down" with too much stuff and too many personal commitments.

Traveling 322 days last year - racking up 350,000 air miles (the Moon's only a quarter of a million miles away) toward a personal goal of ten million (an achievement fewer people have accomplished than astronauts who have set foot on the Moon) with American Airlines (for his loyalty thus far he's earned a ConciergeKey), Ryan let's us understand that the other 42 days at home in his single-bedroom bachelor pad were miserable.

In Dallas he makes acquaintance with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), another frequent flier (60,000 annual miles), with whom he finds much in common and spends the night in the hotel: "We gotta do this again."

Ryan has a knack at turning an attack on vulnerable people's sense of self-worth when he's informing them of their being let go into a golden opportunity: "Anybody who ever built an empire or changed the world sat where you are now, and it's because they sat there that they were able to do it."

His sister Kara (Amy Morton), who applies the glue that keeps the family together, calls to say that their youngest sibling Julie (Melanie Lynskey) will be getting married in Milwaukee and asks a favor of him to take photos before the wedding, using a cutout Styrofoam picture of the couple against a background of the various airports he'll be passing through.

Called back to Omaha, Ryan along with the 22 other transition specialists listens to his boss Craig Gregory (Jason Bateman) speak of the hard times facing retailers along with the auto and housing industries as "our moment" before being introduced to Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a 23-year-old psychology graduate with a new approach: to cutback on travel expenses, the company will fire people via the Internet. Threatened with being grounded, Ryan argues that what he does can't be reproduced on a computer screen ("There's a dignity to the way I do it"); he confidently challenges Natalie to fire him.

Nevertheless, Gregory assigns Ryan to partner with Natalie to show her the ropes; Mister Empty Bag begins by paring down her luggage and offering tips for getting through airport security lines quickly as they make their first flight together. After asking Natalie to define what exactly is their mission (transitioning employees out of a job while minimizing legal blowback), Ryan offers a humanizing corrective: "We are here to make limbo tolerable" by providing the possibility of dim hope before shoving them into the water.

Meanwhile, Alex calls him: "Think of me as yourself with a vagina"; they also text message each other from Hilton hotel to Hilton hotel, making plans for another rendezvous.

After listening to employees' reactions to being informed of their loss of employment (most of these people shown on camera actually had been terminated by their companies), now having to face home foreclosure, not enough money for kids to go to college, an empty refrigerator and gasoline tank, but most important a loss of self-esteem, Ryan soothes Bob (J.K. Simmons) by helping him see a brighter future for himself ("This is a rebirth") by following his earlier dream of becoming a chef.

When Natalie attempts to apply her technique with a passive/aggressive African-American woman (calm on the surface but seething within), she's shaken up when the woman announces she intends to jump off a bridge. "We take people when most fragile and set them adrift," Ryan reminds her; "We're not swans," he tells his audience, "we're sharks."

Following Wichita, Tulsa, Des Moines … in Miami the very bright but brittle Natalie receives a heartbreaking text message from her fiancé Brian of his decision to end their romance (sort of like getting laid off from love over the Internet) just as Alex appears as prearranged with Ryan. Ryan, challenging Natalie to "Sell me on marriage" (children, love, settling down, companionship), blunts her final point by stating: "We all die alone."

What does a woman want in a man? Both Alex and Natalie finally agree that an acceptable man must have "a nice smile," which Ryan possesses. However, Natalie expresses her peevishness over Ryan's "casual relationship" with Alex, the attitude of an adolescent.

While in Detroit after they experiment with firing people in the next room facing only a computer screen, Gregory recalls them to Omaha "for good," satisfied with the results. Instead of accompanying Natalie back to Nebraska, Ryan takes a flight to Las Vegas to be with Alex, whom he asks to be his date for Julie's wedding in Wisconsin.

Upon his arrival Kara tells Ryan that her husband Frank isn't coming because they've separated; then after the celebratory party before the wedding on a wintry, snowy day, the groom, Jim Miller (Danny McBride) gets cold feet. When Kara asks her brother to talk to Jim, Ryan replies, "I tell people about how to avoid commitment," but then has a heart-to-heart with the jittery man of the moment: "Life's better with company. Everybody needs a co-pilot."

Before she flies back to Chicago, leaving her fantasy of escapism for her real life, Alex says to Ryan: "Call me when you get lonely." While Ryan's flying over Dubuque, Sam Elliott makes an appearance as an airline pilot.

Director/co-producer/co-screenwriter (with Sheldon Turner in adapting Walter Kirn's novel) Jason Reitman's handsomely smart film of a man who lives to fly high is definitely deserving of being among the top ten picks of the year for its topicality in an economy suffering from high unemployment and for, being a romantic comedy, not concluding cornily in Nebraska or Chicago; but as for best film of 2009, well, that's still up in the air.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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