Most Rewatchable Scene
The final Michael-Karen confrontation and the $50 cab ride; the baguette scene with Arthur in Times Square; the Westchester hit-and-run consultation with Greer ('I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor')
In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:29:42Read transcript
- The category is framed as what you type into YouTube after 'Michael Clayton': the final Michael-Karen confrontation, the Westchester hit-and-run consultation, Arthur Edens' baguettes, meeting Arthur in the Milwaukee jail, Karen Crowder contracting the hitman, or Michael's speech to his son in the car.
- The pick is the Michael-Karen confrontation: the last ten minutes are perfect, especially the long shot of Michael walking away from the scene, Michael's cop brother who has been recording it coming into frame, Karen collapsed in the background, and the seamless shift to Michael in the cab with a favorite line, 'Give me $50 worth.' — Lindsay Zoladz
- You cannot tell an Uber to give you $50 worth, and $50 no longer buys a mind-clearing cab ride in New York; starting in the financial district you would need at least a hundred.
- The ending is a showdown between Swinton and Clooney, though not a classic one: pathetic in a weirdly captivating way, with Michael avenging Arthur, whom Karen has had killed; any good confrontation begins with someone you thought was dead reappearing, and the clip is played ('I'm not the guy that you kill. I'm the guy that you buy').
- Asked for the most rewatchable scene, the answer is the baguette scene, just on its face: it has a weird whiplash, beginning with Clooney running up on Wilkinson after leaving his kid in the car, Wilkinson wandering the earth through a Times Square montage with a bag of baguettes, Clooney seeming to have the upper hand and asserting dominance as the persuasive talker while Wilkinson stammers and holds the baguettes the whole time. — Justin Charity
- At the end Wilkinson digs deep and finds the fastball; the clip is played of Arthur's calm rebuttal ('you're a bag man, not an attorney'), explaining that Michael should have kept him in Wisconsin and that the single criterion for involuntary incarceration is danger, and it plays as Arthur very calmly listing all the ways Michael fucked up and then saying goodbye.
- Lawyers out-lawyering each other is the film's great recurring interaction and this one is maybe the favorite; another participant has the baguette scene as a close second; the bag is counted at a dozen baguettes, not fifteen, which Arthur never eats, since they sit untouched on the counter in the apartment shot, prompting the 'baguette watch' joke.
- A uniquely New York thing: bumping into someone coming home after being out all night while you are getting coffee, the 'did you get some bread?' guy; everybody has been the bread guy, everybody has been Michael Clayton, and the film nails the embodiment of two people who did not want the encounter running at each other as if they see each other on the street all the time.
- The third pick, in the top ten of one participant's overall YouTube searches, is the 'I'm not a miracle worker. I'm a janitor' scene; the clip is played ('There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room'), and it is called an effective piece of screenwriting from a film that feels loose and organic yet is built like a little model boat in a glass bottle.
- Not a single piece of the film fails to build toward something else, and this entertaining, hilarious scene tells you everything about Michael, who barely speaks until the end while Greer rants about the guy running in the middle of the street at midnight and tries angles like saying the car was stolen, and Greer's wife dramatically throws a cocktail glass at the wall in their rich kitchen; instead of the expected fix, Michael defeatedly offers to get a criminal lawyer there in fifteen minutes, making himself the middleman; the scene has been watched maybe a thousand times and is called by far the most rewatchable.