Up there with Up in The Air

Up In The Air, much like Wild Hogs, is a movie made for a generation that I am not a member of, so, on this rare occasion, I admit that maybe the opinion of someone older would be more applicable.

George Clooney is once again asked to muster up all his acting talent and play a slightly older but still very suave gentleman. (How does he do it?)

This time his silver-haired, lady killer character is named Ryan and he flies from state to state, company to company, firing people.

When an employee is to well-loved or a boss too soft, they call in an axe man. They call in Ryan.

You'd think this is where the meat of the movie would lie, that Ryan would struggle with the incredible emotional devastation that comes with terminating workers, but it doesn't. Ryan loves his job and he is rather good at it: he actually makes one or two people happy that their job is done.

The meat of this feast is that Ryan has made this his lifestyle. He lives out of a suitcase, knows the layout of all the airports, and has gone to some length to make sure he has no strings to hold him down. This all changes when young go-getter Natalie (played by Annie Kendrick) threatens to make his job obsolete, and when he meets the sexy Alex (played by Vera Farmiga), he starts to wonder if maybe he could use some real human connection in his life.

Jason Rietman, who also directed such quirky films as Thank You For Smoking and Juno, repeats his brilliance here. He does a job that so many other directors find hard: he lets the characters speak. Close-ups are used sparingly and there are no wide-panning crane shots -- the only time the camera work gets even the slightest bit decadent is the 3-second aerial landscape shots that are used for transition. The visuals don't make the film stunning, the characters do.

A solid film: dry, but with heart where it needed and an ending you don't often get in Hollywood. The only way I could have enjoyed this story of a middle-aged man watching the world go by more is if I was middle-aged man, but I am still in my 20s, so it missed the mark there (I'll forgive it though).

I give it a 3.5.