Up In The Air

Went and saw Up In The Air last night and I highly recommend you do the same. I had high expectations after seeing the trailer countless times (Trailerama is the shit) and reading many a review on it. You know a movie is good when you expect it to be good and it ends up being good. I can't tell you how many times I have had high expectations for a movie and it fails to meet those expectations.

The movie itself is about a guy named Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) who travels around the country firing people for a living. He spends something like 300 days a year on the road and rarely is home (he is from Wilwaukee, I would stay on the road too). After years on the road alone, Bingham finally is ready to settle down and thinks he has found the perfect woman in Alex (Vera Farmiga of The Departed fame). They have common interests, like a love for the road, but when Binghadm surprises Alex at her house he finds out she is married. The movie ends with Bingham looking at a giant outgoing flights board at an airport signifying that once again, his life is up in the air.

The story is somewhat irrelevant however. At its heart, the movie is about the current economic situation our country faces. The countless firings that take place in the movie are heart-wrenching, especially if you know someone who has lost their job recently. When people work at certain jobs for years and then get let go for reasons out of their control they feel helpless. They ask themselves what they could have done different or what they did wrong, when in reality it isn't their fault at all. They were just victims of this horrible economy. But when one door closes another door opens or as Ryan Bingham would tell you when he is firing you, "Kings and Queens have sat in that same chair and it is because they have sat there that they became what they did."

Up In The Air is based on a novel by Walter Kim and is directed by Jason Reitman.