The film Michael Clayton is preceded by the statement "The truth can be adjusted," a concept that heralds the message of the movie: big business adjusts the truth for financial gain, even at the expense of lives (Samuels, 2007). Michael Clayton is a fixer-a corporate lawyer that helps large firms get out of legal messes. In this case, his firm, Kenner, Bach, & Ledeen, is representing agriculture giant UNorth, which is anxious to settle a class action suit concerning the toxicity associated with its methods. The team's most knowledgeable attorney and chief litigator, Arthur, has become a loose cannon, however. In his intensive research for the case, Arthur has discovered that UNorth's methods are indeed toxic and are costing innocent people their lives, and he is about to expose UNorth. In an attempt to silence him, the law firm has him treated as a psychiatric patient, but UNorth's litigation team, headed by the corrupt and diabolical Karen, decides that he is too dangerous to their case and has him terminated by hit men, who make the death look like a suicide.
Michael Clayton, as the law firm's fixer, is encumbered not only with the weight of the case but also with personal problems that include mounting debt, a gambling addiction, and parenting of his son who shuttles back and forth between Clayton and his ex-wife. When Arthur dies, however, the movie begins to take on a greater sense of urgency as Clayton starts to unravel the clues that Arthur left behind. An attempt on his own life nearly succeeds when a car bomb is planted in his car, and it is then that Clayton must make a risky move. Finding that Arthur had paid for a young girl involved with the case to come and visit him and discovering a chilled bottle of champagne and two glasses in his refrigerator, Clayton realizes that Arthur did not commit suicide. When Clayton uses a slip found among Arthur's things to pick up a printing order, he finds 1,000...