Article: Clooney's on his game in thriller 'Michael Clayton'

AS an actor, George Clooney has often mirrored his off-screen persona: a smooth, good-looking charmer who would always be the last guy in the room to lose his temper, to say the wrong thing. But as the title character in the paranoid thriller "Michael Clayton," there's a hum of anger to Clooney's performance, like the sound of fluorescent light. Always on.

As Michael Clayton, a fixer for a big New York law firm, Clooney infuses every word and deed with the weighted-down feeling of a man who's drowning. Clooney gained 30 or 40 pounds to play another troubled character in "Syriana," but looking fit and trim as ever, he feels heavier here.

A former prosecutor who does the firm's dirtiest work ...

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