Up in The Air - Up Up and Away..

This movie tells us about an irregular job that someone has. Ryan Bingham (beautifully played by George Clooney), a person who is responsible for laying-off an employee, seems like having a thrill of the side benefit from his job. He got to fly all over America, with American Airlines, to go to a company who hire his specialties of terminating an employee. He works at CTC that stands for Career Transition & Consultation, that its job desk is to send out the bad news in time like this, tells someone that he or she is no longer needed in their company and offered them a severance package to start a new life, a life that they always wanted before but could not be achieved due to their daily routines at work. Obviously, it is not an easy job for someone to do but somehow Ryan Bingham successfully ‘lured’ the employee to take the severance package and just go on with their new life.
Another interesting story that this movie tried to tell is how Ryan travel all over America using an airplanes, how he is being treated as a privileged person by the airlines, and also by the hotels, where he spent most of his time at Hilton. This benefit comes because of his loyalty of using the same airlines all over the year. Imagine he has to go on travel for 340 days up in the air and just spend only 22 days in his hometown in Omaha, Nebraska. How many miles would he get from his travel? And it is also one of his goals in life, to get as many miles as possible, until he loose counts. By the end of the movie, he managed to fulfill just that. 10,000,000 miles of air travel. With that he is the number #7 person in America who could achieve this. He got to talk with the pilot and his name would then be carved at the side of the airplanes. Apparently, another privileges comes with his achievements, get a dedicated phone line from American Airlines, etc.
But that’s not all, one of his lucky privileges is when he met Alex, a career woman, who turns out to be a frequent flyers as well. Hence they spend some quality time together by having an affair that Ryan soon realized that she already has a family and children.
Another part of the story is when he got back to his hometown and met his boss and briefly told about the company’s plan to apply the video conference termination through the internet. With this plan, he would no longer be needed to travel all over America and just simply do his job at his office in Omaha. This brilliant idea was brought up by Natalie, a young ambitious girl, who followed his boyfriend to Omaha just to get engaged, but later shown that love was not on her side. This plan is brought into the company to reduce the travel and insurance cost. Felt being threatened of losing all of his privileges, Ryan told his boss that Natalie should join her to know what the real deal of their job was, by flying all over America and handed over the news directly and face to face with the employee, not through some internet protocols. Along the journey they found themselves opening up for a different side of their life, Ryan by trying to settle down with Alex, and Natalie by learning how to deal with different effects from people after having a sad news about termination.
Overall, it is a good movie and really meant a lot personally by viewers in America especially in times of crisis like this. No wonder why it is being nominated for 6 Academy Awards for this year including Best Picture and Best Actor. Well, good luck for them, let’s see the result soon in early March. As for me, I definitely need to be Up in The Air again, last time we done that was last year, July 2009, traveling to Yogyakarta.