The thing about Up in the Air is that you shouldn’t like its main character: professional pink slip distributor Ryan Bingham. You shouldn’t find him funny, you shouldn’t find him interesting and you certainly shouldn’t be rooting for him. Ryan is a symptom of a spineless corporate system that cares more about making sure fired employees don’t make a fuss then they do about the fact their loyal workers are losing their jobs. There’s an interesting comparison between Ryan Bingham and the protagonist of the first film by director Jason Reitman, Thank You for Smoking. Like cigarette company spin doctor Nick Naylor, Ryan knows what he is, has made peace with it, and perhaps even revels in it.

Reitman’s third film is another bittersweet comedy. This one is about someone that leads what many would consider a sad, sad life of constant air travel and living out of a single suit case. So naturally, Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney) thinks he’s got it made in the shade. He spends, in total, less than three months a year on the ground at the home office of his company in Omaha Nebraska, and the rest of the time he flies from city to city professionally firing people for corporate execs too spineless to do it themselves. But Ryan finds himself forced to think more about his life on the ground for two reasons. First, his company is considering the implementation of teleconference firings as opposed to sending someone in person, thus ending Ryan’s 250 days a year of travel. The second is Ryan’s growing attraction to Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow corporate jet-setter whom he passes like a ship in the night occasionally.

Typically in a movie like this, it would dawn on Ryan that his baggage-less lifestyle would be hollow and empty. His philosophy, which he shares at an occasional self-help seminar, is to picture all the things that tie you down – friends, family, a house, and possessions – and stuff them all into a backpack and set that thing on fire. As the story unfolds, one might think that Ryan would come to realize that even carrying around a small backpacked filled with a few life attachments would be okay. But in screenwriting parlance though that would be playing it safe and while Ryan doesn’t get a complete transformation, he does begin to re-evaluate a couple of things. It’s to Clooney’s credit as a talented and charismatic actor that Ryan doesn’t come off as a cold-hearted jerk but rather an honest broker of his personal belief in living out of a single suitcase.

The other half of the equation is the subplot about the business of firing people. And though it’s far from a Wall Street like condemnation of corporate culture, one can easily appreciate the humour in how an entity as indifferent as Corporate America can take something as cold and distant as firing someone and add the internet to equation. This idea is cooked up by Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick). Natalie, a newcomer to Ryan’s employer, though eager to please is actually green in the practical business of firing people for a living. But under Ryan’s tutelage she learns his backpack philosophy and that handing out pink slips isn’t as easy as reading the approved script you’re given during job training. If Clooney is the brash and direct centre of the film, then Kendrick, who’s best known as Bella’s fast-talking friend Jessica in the Twilight movies, is the proverbial straight woman, holding her own against Clooney and creating her own unique character voice as well.

Up in the Air is an uncomfortable twist on the times with many people who have been fired or laid off in real life playing the unwitting victims of Ryan’s fire-for-hire sharpshooter. There’s a resonance in here that’s hard to shake, and in a way is a black comedy about the suffering of people living on the economic bubble and the clearly masochistic nature of Ryan’s vocation. Like Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, Ryan Bingham just seems to be, and fortunately Reitman spares us some kind of reckoning or recompense for Ryan and his lifestyle choice. Does he get a wake-up call? Absolutely, but the question is: will it stick? After the credits roll, does he try to make a change, or like so many people stuck in a rut will he find it just easier to stop squirming? Up in the Air is an often humourous ode to being stuck in your ways, and not really knowing how or why or if you might get yourself out of it.