BEFORE: George Clooney carries over, in another business-related film.
THE PLOT: With a job that has him traveling around the country firing people, Ryan Bingham leads an empty life out of a suitcase, until his company does the unexpected: ground him.
AFTER: Another cool character played by Clooney - this time it's a guy who knows all the ins and outs of travel - how to pack, how to get through security screenings quickly, how to take advantage of all the travel rewards programs. He spends 300+ days on the road, so he's got almost no home life, no solid relationship, no children, and that's the way he prefers to live.
Combine this with his job, which is sub-contracted firing of people (I didn't know this was a valid career choice), and he almost comes across as a stoic, unfeeling bastard. But he encounters two women who prove that theory wrong - one is a female version of himself, a professional traveler who he has casual flings with (when their schedules coincide), and a younger woman at his company who's trying to cut costs by implementing a system of firing people by teleconference - as if their job wasn't cold-hearted enough.
So he takes the young woman out on the road to show her the ropes, demonstrate why their job should be done in person - essentially to try and salvage his own job (who fires the people who fire people?) and the lifestyle to which he's become accustomed.
I get the double meaning of the title - he spends a lot of time in the air, but he's also cut off, adrift from most of society. Nice. And just as he realizes that he might want to settle down, something happens that leaves him more detached than ever.
NITPICK POINT: The movie makes a big deal about the number of his frequent-flier miles. But are these unused miles that he's saved in his account (because those do expire at some point, don't they?) or total miles traveled? Because I didn't think they credited you for used miles - maybe I just don't use enough to be at his level, I only make one trip a year...
NITPICK POINT #2: There's some last-minute travel shown in the film, and some of it is business-related, and some of it is personal. Isn't that the most expensive way to travel, booking the same day? Who paid for that travel? Was it paid by frequent-flyer miles? Because technically those belong to the company - you shouldn't use business-accumulated miles for personal travel.
Also starring Vera Farmiga (last seen in "The Departed"), Anna Kendrick, Jason Bateman (last seen in "Couples Retreat"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Fanboys"), with cameos from Sam Elliott (last seen in "Thank You For Smoking"), J.K. Simmons (last seen in "I Love You,Man"), Zach Galifianakis (last seen in "G-Force"), and Young MC.
RATING: 8 out of 10 layovers
I loved this movie.
ReplyDelete1) Seeing George Clooney methodically pack his carryon several times, plus the speech he gives the newbie about checked bags, convinced me to never check another bag, ever. Well, that, and the fact that a checked bag adds $50 to the cost of a roundtrip. But watching this movie on cable for a whole month caused me to start seeing this as a puzzle that could be solved by finding The Right Tricks, and we nerds love puzzles and methodical processes.
Result: Covering a trade show in San Francisco for five days...one bag. Six days in Barcelona and London, with a trade show and lots of meetings...one bag. My final exam came last month, when I had to be on the road for nine days in two cities. One bag! I must have one pair of clean underwear and socks for each day of travel but everything else is an opportunity for a Clever Solution.
2) Air Miles. The more miles you've flown, the more valuable you are to the airline and the more insane butt-kissy perqs you'll get. At the top level in the AA program, they even guarantee you a seat on a sold-out flight if you give them 24 hours' notice. Isn't that incredible? Someone else who's paid for the ticket to San Diego months ago and has a confirmed reservation and who MUST be there in time for Comic-Con WILL get bumped in favor of a million-miler who, on a whim, decided he wants to go to the San Diego Zoo for the day. These fliers have concierges who can make pretty much anything happen.
ReplyDeleteAlso, his character is probably already paying "full book" rate (one of the reasons why business travelers are so prized), and he probably often has to book travel on short notice...so the price difference of this kind of last-minute travel isn't that great.
Dunno what the "ten million mile" mark means. I bet it means "lifetime." These programs recognize these kinds of VVIP fliers by awarding them things like lifetime elite status once they reach a million miles.
His miles won't expire if he keeps flying. It's taken me a few years to accrue enough miles on the AA program to get a free international roundtrip. I got to keep my miles from year to year because I flew AA at least once every 18 months. The only thing you "lose" because you didn't fly enough miles is your status.
3) Paying for miles. This is an active HR issue at many companies. Traditionally, rewards miles are the unwritten compensation for the ungodly hassle of having to travel so much for your work. Believe me, during those months when I have to fly two or three times, it gets REALLY old. Some companies do insist that rewards miles be used for business travel, but that's a recent invention and mostly, it's like making employees pay for the coffee in the breakroom. It's considered a d*** move and a sign that either the company is in trouble or some executive is a hideous micromanager (the kind who ends sentences with the phrase "...that's like stealing from the _company._"
ReplyDelete4) His job. I admired how much care they put into his character. You're predisposed to dislike a man who does nothing but fire people all day long. So they made sure he cared about his job and was really good at it. If you were going to be fired, wouldn't you like it to be done by someone who rips the Band-Aid off quickly, doesn't make you listen to how He Knows How You Feel, ad leaves you thinking that it's just the end of your job, not the end of your life?
It's pretty clear that he wants to stay on the road to make his 10,000,000 mile goal but he also sounds sincere when he says that someone who doesn't know how his job works isn't entitled to make it obsolete. We actually kind of _want_ him out there, firing people, and the ongoing demonstration of just how difficult it is to do this thing well -- as seen when the Newbie takes the command chair -- is part of what makes the flick work.
4) Hiccups: no way would this company start firing people via teleconference. The firm sells a service that promises little blowback. These companies are paying to make sure that employees calmly hand over their security cards, pack up their offices, leave, and not sue. They're not going to be satisfied when these people storm out of the room in mid-conference and shout to the rest of the cubicles "They just canned my ***...via Skype! Those gutless *******s! If you've got half a brain, you'll steal whatever you can and get the hell off of this sinking ship right now!!!!" before calling lawyers.
Also: so instead of sending George Clooney to the office to fire people, they send an IT guy to set up a workstation and make sure the software is running properly? Or are they just going to hope that the company there still has an IT department and that they're willing to install uncertified software on the LAN? Where's the Win?
I'm also not sure that this guy would walk out on his starmaking motivational talk like that. Nice theater but it broke the reality.
And I was one of those people muttering at the screen "Yeah, well, if he KNEW you were married, maybe he WOULDN'T have shown up at your house unannounced! Self-centered, much?!?"
Re: Airline miles - I appreciate your clarifications, but I stand by my statement that the MOVIE should have been clearer about how they work. I shouldn't have been left wondering whether the 10 million was miles flown, or miles accumulated/unflown. In the last scene, we learn that he has at least 500,000 miles unused in his account, so that makes it even more confusing.
ReplyDeleteI blame the airlines, too, for converting everything to the arbitrary "Miles" unit. When did a unit of distance become comparable to a unit of currency? How many miles to a dollar, or vice versa?
I think for someone like you, or my boss, who goes on various trips that might be covered by different companies, keeping the bonus miles and using them for personal travel later is an acceptable earned perk.
But for someone that works for just one company, I can see the need to apply those miles to business trips only. If an employee used a company car for a personal trip, or a personal car for a company trip, there would need to be compensation paid. I'd imagine FF miles would work the same way for a company so travel-based.
There's "what the boss/company is entitled to" and then there's "what the boss/company SHOULD do." Your boss, for example, is entitled to demand that you take a big box of office papers every time you work his con table, and be inputting old records and updating a database every minute you're on the clock and not actively helping him or a customer. But that wouldn't be smart.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the agents at the Clooney character's company are expected to be away from home (and their families) 200+ days a year. I can easily believe that this company would consider rewards miles to be an employee bonus, as a way to avoid repelling some of their best potential hires and retain the ones they have. "You didn't see your kids a whole hell of a lot this year, but you did get to take them all to Disney Japan for a week for free."