Up In The Air (2009)

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a corporate down sizer. He lays off people who's bosses are too cowardly to do it themselves. He flies all over the country and has almost amassed his goal of 10,000 frequent flyer miles. Apparently only about 6 people have done this before.

He is also a motivational speaker who's speech "What's in your backpack" is all about how great life is without things or relationships. He himself is only "home" about 43 days out of the year which is the way that he likes it. He has almost nothing in his apartment (a hotel room has more stuff in it) and he has only casual relationships. He also doesn't have a great relationship with his family.

While on a business trip, he meets a woman named Alex (Vera Farmiga) who is just like him. In fact, when they meet, they spend time comparing frequent flyer cards for everything from hotels to rent-a-cars. They begin a relationship based on when they are in the same town.

Ryan is called home to Omaha by his boss (Jason Bateman) and is told that they are going to be trying something new, firing people over the computer. Whoa Nellie, this would change his whole life. The new employee suggesting this new approach is a confident woman named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) and Ryan must take her on the road for training. He is not happy.

Natalie goes along with Ryan and begins to see that detaching yourself from these firings is not as easy as it looks. When Natalie is dumped by text by the boyfriend that she moved to Omaha for, Ryan and Alex take her to a party that they are crashing that is given by some electronics company. She has a good time.

Ryan invites Alex to go with him to his sisters wedding and she accepts. When they arrive it is obvious that there is tension between siblings. The day of the wedding finds that his future brother in law is having second thoughts. Ryan is able to convince him to marry his sister and all have a good time at the wedding.

Ryan and Natalie are informed that they are to do a trial run using the computer to fire someone while they are in the next room. This is disastrous. They go back to Omaha to find that one of the people that they had fired earlier had killed themselves and that leads Natalie to quit and Ryan to go find Alex. We soon find that Alex is not who she led Ryan to believe that she was and he is dumped.

When he finally reaches his 10,000 frequent flyer miles, it certainly didn't feel as good as he thought it would.

This was a great movie and I would recommend it. Clooney was great here, not best actor great, but great. Farmiga and Kendrick are also good, but not Oscar good. You might have seen Farmiga in "The Departed" and Kendrick in the "Twilight" Series.

Rated R. 109 Minutes. I give this movie FOUR STARS.