Film: “Up in the Air” with George Clooney

I suppose if anyone could put a human face on corporate downsizing, it would be George Clooney, circa 2009.

Clooney stars in “Up In the Air,” a well-regarded Jason Reitman film I somehow missed back in the day. He plays Ryan Bingham, a slick corporate exec at a “career transition counseling company” who spends 322 days a year in the air, traveling about the country—and sacking people.

How does Ryan justify this task (besides his paycheck)? He sees himself as a warm, understanding kind of guy because he delivers the bad news in person. Ryan’s secondary job is to give motivational speeches on “relieving one's life of excess physical and emotional baggage.”

As you might have guessed by now, Ryan has neither wife nor kids to stand in his way. Instead his greatest goal in life is to accumulate 10 million frequent flyer miles— not that he has any intention of actually using them.

Ryan’s work life is threatened by the sudden appearance of Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a young eager-beaver employee who comes up with the money-saving idea of firing people through video conferencing. Ryan, eager to protect his own hide, and keep earning miles, asks her to accompany him on a fam tour so he can show her the error of her ways.

We soon discover Ryan does more than accumulate miles on these trips. He occasionally hooks up with Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga), an equally soulless female road-warrior who is just as turned on by the concepts of "elite status" and “preferred member.” As they draw closer romantically, Ryan begins to rethink his single-man existence and wonders if he might want to give it all up and settle down with Alex in his northern Wisconsin hometown.

For me, the most moving parts of this movie happen when the camera cuts away from Ryan to the people he is going to fire: the employees who are suddenly blindsided by their impending termination. One of them is played by an actor who would go on to win an Oscar for a far less sympathetic role: J. K. Simmons who plays a sadistic music teacher in “Whiplash

At one point in “Up,” Ryan muses about a co-worker he is about to fire: “Poor Steve (Zack Galifianakis) has worked here for seven years. He's never had a meeting with me before, or passed me in the hall, or told me a story in the break room. And that's because I don't work here. I work for another company that lends me out to pussies like Steve's boss, who don't have the balls to sack their own employees, and in some cases, for good reason. Because people do crazy shit when they get fired.”

If this is the kind of movie that makes you feel warm and cozy all over, stream it at your leisure. On the other hand, if you’ve ever been canned, or feel squeamish about the subject, skip it and watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” instead. Snoopy and Company are a lot more holiday-appropriate.

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