In Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air," George Clooney plays a frequent-flying, loafer-wearing, airline-miles-hoarding smoothie whose job is to fire people. In other words, he's in the canning business: As his character, Ryan Bingham, explains in voice-over, he roams the country doing the dirty work for bosses who "don't have the balls to sack their own employees." He treks to places like St. Louis and Detroit, where he sits these poor Joes and Josephines down and spoon-feeds them a line of patter about how being out of work is going to be really good for them, a golden opportunity to move on to greater things in life. Sometimes they bluster and fume at him; sometimes they cry. He cares -- a little -- but his professionalism always carries the day. When his work is finished in one city, he jets off to another, a modern-day nomad in a wrinkle-resistant suit. He's a success story built from the empty shells of other people's lives.
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