‘Air’ will be sitting first class at the Academy Awards

Ryan Bingham is a mixture of motivated businessman, smooth operator, and abject loner. He’s the kind of guy you can respect for devoting himself to his career but he’s also someone you can never truly know because he lives only for himself. This is co-writer/director Jason Reitman’s depiction of the middle aged, upper middle class 21st century self-made American man.

As a career man, Bingham is the most hated man imaginable. He is a terminator, or to be legally appropriate, a termination facilitator who travels the country to fire people when bosses don’t have the balls to do it themselves. In tough economic times his job security only improves as other industries continue to downsize.

Interestingly, Reitman used a mix of actors and people who had recently been fired to portray realistic reactions from getting the pink slip.

Bingham admittedly does the dirty work but he does so with an air of dignity.
Enter hot young new co-worker Natalie (Kendrick) who has big plans for taking the business off the road and into the web. Even the boss (Jason Bateman) is on board.

Not Bingham. His preferred home is in airplanes, hotels, and rental cars. When he is forced to show Natalie the ropes of the job she learns how difficult it is to fire someone. The comedic interplay between the two is charming and both actors should receive well-deserved Oscar nods.

Farmiga plays the love interest Alex. She appears to be the female equivalent of Bingham – career oriented, non-committal, infatuated with member status, but looks may be deceiving. Farmiga should round of the trio of actors in the film who receive Oscar notice.

These women cause Bingham to question his comfortable lifestyle. A wedding for one of his long lost sisters further reinforces his life reassessment but just when you think a sappy character transformation is on the horizon Reitman shows that he is anything but a conventional director.

"Up in the Air" is for mainstream audiences but is too witty, humorous, and philosophical to be a mainstream film. It is depressing in its authenticity, artsy in its approach, and meaningful in its analysis of the human condition. Along with "Thank You for Smoking" and "Juno" this film proves that the 32 year-old son of the "Ghostbusters" director (Ivan Reitman) is legit.