Up in the Air: Clooney and leading ladies go for gold

Writer-director Jason Reitman says he created his third film Up in the Air with George Clooney in mind - and the 48-year-old actor turns in one of the best performances of his career. But what is really notable about this comedy drama, tipped for Golden Globes this weekend, is that Hollywood's smoothest ladies' man shares the screen with two very unstarry actresses, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, both of whom are superb.
 
Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a suave corporate hitman paid to fly back and forth across America working as a "career transition counsellor"; in other words, he's paid to fire workers on behalf of cowardly bosses.
 
Ryan relishes his job, spending 322 days a year "up in the air" and staying in designer hotels while getting ever closer to reaching a magical 10 million miles on his frequent-flyer card. His mantra is to never carry any baggage - neither as a business traveller, nor as an unattached bachelor.
 
Bingham's lifestyle is threatened when geeky graduate go-getter Natalie Keener, played by Kendrick, comes up with the idea of cutting costs by firing people over the internet instead of in person. In an effort to save his lifestyle, Ryan takes Natalie across the States to show her how to deliver bad news humanely.
 
Kendrick, best known for her role as schoolgirl Jessica Stanley in the vampire film saga Twilight, has been praised for her role as the ferocious but naive Natalie. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called Kendrick the film's "secret weapon" while the New York Times critic Manohla Dargis noted the 24-year-old actress "grabs every scene she's in".
 
Reitman, who cast Ellen Page star as the quirky teenager in his 2007 hit Juno, has a reputation for giving plum roles to actresses who don't fit the Hollywood studios' stereotype. Up in the Air's other female lead, Vera Farmiga, fits this pattern too.
 
Farmiga, who played opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning The Departed, was recently described as "one of the smartest actresses in Hollywood". The 36-year-old actress shines as businesswoman Alex Goran, a fellow frequent-flyer who clicks with Clooney's Ryan Bingham because she, too, is seeking no-strings-attached sex. "Think of me as you with a vagina," she tells Bingham in one scene.
 
Alex's storyline is only a side-plot yet Farmiga is formidable, thanks to her rapport with Clooney. "They're simply one of the most fun couples seen onscreen in many a moon," raved Variety reviewer Todd McCarthy. Despite his fear of settling down, Bingham may have met his perfect match.

As Dargis said in her New York Times review,  one of the film's greatest pleasures is that its actresses "share the frame with Mr Clooney as equals, not props".  
 
WHAT THE CRITICS ARE SAYING:
 
Todd McCarthy, Variety: "Impeccably groomed and with a ready answer to almost any remark anyone can throw at him, Clooney owns his role in the way first-rate film stars can, so infusing the character with his own persona that everything he does seems natural and right. The timing in the Clooney-Farmiga scenes is like splendid tennis, with each player surprising the other with shots but keeping the rally going to breathtaking duration." 
 
Ian Nathan, Empire: "While Clooney gets the lines, the trajectory of the plot, the ravishing Farmiga has a range of subtle glances, ironic smiles and deft shrugs that suggest a world of emotion held sternly at bay." (Verdict: 5/5 stars)Richard Corliss, Time magazine: "Clooney [gives] the sharpest, most nuanced performance of his career. He gets inside Ryan because, as he has acknowledged, this is a portrait of a character not far from his own: a travelling man with scores of women in his past, riding high on the confidence that people will buy anything he pitches - even a savoury comedy-drama with a tart aftertaste. He and Reitman could close the sale on Oscar night."
 
Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "For all its superficial topicality, Up in the Air mostly feels old-fashioned, nostalgic even, in its fond lament for a pre-9/11 world of travel. There are no security scares in this world. Its fetishisation of the rituals of flying is near-pornographic, with check-in girls substituting for bedfellows and frequent-flyer cards for sex toys. Bingham's winning of millions of air miles come across as notches on his bed post. He's the Warren Beatty of interstate business travel." (Verdict: 3/5 stars)

Kevin Maher, the Times: "As Bingham's suavely conceited facade slowly cracks throughout the movie, Clooney reveals hitherto unexplored actorly depths. He's stiller and quieter here than he's ever been. He's haunted. And he plays his age." (Verdict: 4/5 stars)

Nigel Andrews, the Financial Times: "The smartly scripted tale of isolation and impermanence makes us nod censoriously while also laughing, once or twice dabbing our eyes (at remorse time), and surrendering to non-stop star appeal."(Verdict: 4/5 stars)

Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian: "There's nothing too profound here, and yet it works well as a smart, light cosmopolitan comedy: it's a snack, rather than a meal, but expertly made." (Verdict: 4/5 stars) ·