If it’s true that a great motion picture begins with a great script, then it’s no wonder that Michael Clayton stands among the year’s best, smartest and most thrilling films. Expertly crafted by writer-director Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton features not just a brilliant screenplay delivering the highest quotient of fantastic scenes this year, but also an archetypal American cynicism burdening an archetypal American leading man (George Clooney) until his only way out is coming up for breath, though he could never imagine how hard that would actually be.

Clayton takes care of the unsavory work at a New York law firm. No matter how dirty – or indeed, because of how dirty – the deed may be, he’s on speed dial to clean it up. When his longtime associate (Tom Wilkinson) has a meltdown during a deposition for a case involving one of the firm’s biggest and most crooked corporate clients, Clayton finds himself in familiar territory with much higher stakes.

Apparently, it’s still easy for some to dismiss George Clooney as a prime time doctor who just so happened to hit a few out of the park at the box office. But look deeper, especially at his past five years of work, and you’ll see that Clooney not only makes some of the best choices of any A-list actor and filmmaker in Hollywood, but some of the most interesting and riskiest.

Finding a balance between Ocean’s movies and assured, intelligent films like Michael Clayton and Good Night, and Good Luck is not an easy thing for anyone to do. After all, he could still be angling for Batman movies. Here, he’s his most beaten down and exhausted as a man at the end of his tether.

Clooney is supported by a uniformly terrific cast. Wilkinson, Sydney Pollack and Tilda Swinton all lift their own considerable games not to push Clooney but to keep up with what is a singularly lean and effective performance by a movie star who doesn’t need to try so hard.

Stealing his thunder, however, is Tony Gilroy, who has written the scripts for all three Bourne movies and shows off a more layered style of storytelling with his directorial debut. His blistering dialogue does not end when you think the next scene should start; it ends when the characters finish what they have to say. That’s rarer than you might think. He shows a great facility as a director, but the beauty and the strength of Michael Clayton is the best written screenplay of the year.