Welcoming the laid-off to a better world

JASON REITMAN'S "Up in the Air" had me thinking that I haven't seen a young filmmaker with such astute command of Hollywood craft since Steven Spielberg.

Reitman, you probably know, is the son of producer-director Ivan Reitman ("Meatballs," "Ghostbusters"). He grew up on movie sets and around movie stars and, instead of ogling them, he apparently studied them. He knows how they work, and, in particular, he knows how their work reads to audiences.

One of Reitman's particular skills is to put the right actor in the right role - I remember watching "Juno" and being struck by how shrewdly cast it was. And Aaron Eckhart was perfect for Reitman's "Thank You For Smoking." I don't know how Reitman knew that, but it wasn't from watching his performance in "The Core."

In "Up in the Air," Reitman has his first big star in George Clooney, and uses him brilliantly, leveraging Clooney's maturing talent (and his image as an elusive bachelor) to play Bingham, a charming stranger who lives on the road, happily alone.

Or, rather, at 20,000 feet. Bingham is the premier hatchet man at a consulting firm that flies him around the country to tell folks they've been axed. He's the top man because he's so smooth, assured and adept at summoning fake sympathy, the soothing lie.

Or is he lying? In his motivational speeches, Bingham insists that people function best when they swim alone, like sharks. Maybe he truly believes it.

Maybe he truly believes that he's welcoming the laid-off to a better world - a world without obligation or responsibility. Bingham's eccentric beliefs, and Clooney's cheerful embodiment of them, allow "Up in the Air" to feel like a comedy, even as it shows us reel after reel of people losing their jobs.

"Up in the Air" then delivers an amusing irony. Bingham falls in something like love, with a woman (Vera Farmiga) who is his female mirror image - a contented, rootless road warrior.

Reitman concocts a wonderful scene of the two travelers picking each other up at an airport bar, comparing plastic and frequent-flier miles, sizing each other up, hoping to find someone who'll warrant the perfect, commitment-free one-night stand. The joke is that they commit to their commitment-free relationship.

Again, Reitman strikes gold in casting. Yeah, Farmiga, was good in "The Departed," but she shines in this glamorous, witty two-hander with Clooney - it's like watching the fifth pairing of some Golden Age screen couple.