Ryan Bingham, the suave road warrior so brilliantly played by George Clooney in Jason Reitman’s razor-sharp, crowd-pleasing and Oscar-friendly comedy “Up in the Air,” thinks he has it all figured out.
Never check luggage and always stand behind Asians in the airport security line, he advises, as he spends hundreds of days a year crisscrossing America to coldly downsize ever-increasing numbers of workers on behalf of their employers.
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What Ryan hasn’t figured out is that he needs what he comes to call a “co-pilot” for his rudderless existence, typified by his obsession to collect 10 million frequent-flier miles from American Airlines. And not because he actually wants to use them to go anywhere.
A deeply confirmed, middle-aged bachelor, Ryan finally glimpses an alternative lifestyle when he meets up with his comely opposite number, Alex (Vera Farmiga), who appears to be even more averse to commitment than he is.
In one of the great meet-cutes in Hollywood history, they compare cards from customer loyalty programs, debate their merits and, post-coitus, sit laptop to laptop, trying to schedule another tryst into their transcontinental lifestyles.
“Think of me as yourself — only with a vagina,” Alex coos.
It’s an offer even Ryan can’t refuse, until he is grounded by his sleazy boss (Jason Bateman) back at the home office in Omaha — where our hero spent a “miserable 43 days” last year in an apartment that closely resembles a hotel room.
The Boss thinks the company can squeeze even more money out of the country’s rising tide of economic misery by dismissing employees by video over the Internet.
This horrifies Ryan, and not just because he’ll be losing all those miles. Even for someone who coolly lies to people that being fired is an “opportunity,” this seems too callous.
Ryan protests to The Boss that Natalie, the young efficiency expert who has developed the video-firing system, has no experience in actually handling dismissals. So The Boss orders our hero to take the naive Natalie (Anna Kendrick, funny and touching) out on the road for a real-world education that turns out to be rather brutal.
The downsizing scenes have a real bite because — aside from J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis — Reitman has recruited real-life workers from Detroit and St. Louis who have been encouraged to draw on their own firings.
Between these mini-dramas and a rather desperately bacchanalian trade show crashed by Ryan, Alex and Natalie, “Up in the Air” offers perhaps the most devastating portrait of corporate American since “The Apartment” won the Best Picture Oscar half a century ago.
The pitch-perfect direction by Jason Reitman (“Juno”) perfectly balances comedy and drama, even teasing us with the prospect of a romantic comedy ending when the increasingly smitten Ryan — who realizes for the first time in his life that he’s lonely — invites Alex as his date to the wedding of a sister (Melanie Lynskey) he barely knows.
Clooney reaches deeply into himself for this role, with thoroughly winning results — especially in a terrific scene where the marriage-phobic Ryan is forced to calm the anxieties of a bridegroom (Danny McBride) with cold feet.
He is perfectly partnered by the sexy Farmiga, who is a much more accomplished actress than you might suspect from her best-known role, a thankless turn as Matt Damon’s shrink/girlfriend in “The Departed.”
“Up in the Air,” based on a novel by Walter Kirn, is one of the year’s best films and so tapped into the zeitgeist that it’s positively scary.