Of course, this doesn't mean your protagonist is the cookie-cutter 'good man' washed up in 'a sea of evil.' George Clooney's Michael Clayton is an expensively-clad janitor, a divorced legal fixer with a gambling problem and a debt to the underworld.
He's the man who gets the job done but -- because the manner in which he does this might be too unsavoury to be put on record -- has worked behind the scenes, without financial appreciation for his labours. He hasn't made partner yet, and has to virtually kneel when asking his boss for $80,000.
And while you are named after him, you starkly honest film, you really aren't about any one character, are you?
Tony Gilroy directs with fantastic self-assurance, starting off with a Network-style meltdown as top lawshark Arthur Edens feels the grime of his job ('the patina of shit,' Tom Wilkinson puts it, playing a marvellous Edens) and strips naked during a deposition for sinister client U/North, having discovered its messier side.
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