George Clooney grows up

Now a two-time Golden Globe winner and a triple-threat Oscar nominee, George Clooney is a long way from “Return to Horror High” and “Return of the Killer Tomatoes,” which launched his movie career nearly two decades ago.

He’s also survived such career-threatening ruins as “Batman and Robin” (1997) and “From Dusk Till Dawn” (1996), while establishing a politically provocative persona in such high-profile 2005 films as “Syriana” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

Clooney’s topical movies actually began somewhat earlier. A direct line can be traced from “The Peacemaker” (1997), in which he plays a maverick special-forces agent trying to stop Iran from getting Russian nukes, to “Syriana,” in which Clooney plays a maverick CIA agent trying to avert another kind of Middle East debacle.

He just does it better now. In “The Peacemaker,” busily directed by his “ER” director, Mimi Leder, he comes off as arrogant and obnoxious, so certain of his understanding of a dangerous situation that he’s dying to break the rules.

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In “Syriana,” directed with far more subtlety and control by Stephen Gaghan, he’s betrayed and trapped by forces he can’t control. The movie and Clooney’s performance are far less gung-ho; they’re the work of people who recognize complexity where they once saw simpler solutions.

In part, this is the difference between a movie produced four years before Sept. 11, 2001, and a movie produced four years after. “The Peacemaker,” which includes cameo appearances by the World Trade Center, ultimately deals with a terrorist attack on New York City. (So does a non-Clooney 1998 film, “The Siege,” in which martial law is declared and Arabs are sent to a concentration camp. Indifferently received at the time of their initial release, both movies have acquired a fascination they didn’t have before.)

Clooney’s performance in “Syriana,” which earned him his second Globe as well as an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, suggests a depth and maturity he didn’t show (or perhaps wasn’t allowed to show) in “The Peacemaker.” That earlier, pushier performance can’t touch the mounting sense of futility and tragedy he brings to his key role in “Syriana.”

Project close to his heart
Clooney has also been nominated for directing and co-writing “Good Night, and Good Luck,” his deliberate attempt to draw historical parallels between the McCarthy era and current troubles in Washington D.C. He could have collected a fourth nomination for co-producing the film, but he insisting full producing credit go to his friend and co-writer, Grant Heslov.

Clooney also has a role in the movie, smoothly underplaying the part of CBS newsman Fred Friendly while allowing David Strathairn and Frank Langella to set off the fireworks. Rarely has ensemble playing seemed so selfless.

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The son of a newsman, Nick Clooney, who insisted that his children keep up with current events, Clooney is often drawn to explosive subject matter. He produced a live 2000 television remake of the 1964 anti-nuke thriller, “Fail Safe,” and made his 2002 directing debut with “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” about a game-show host who claimed to be a CIA agent. He’s talked about doing a live television remake of “Network,” Paddy Chayefsky’s prophetic 1976 satire about the blending of news and entertainment.

Clooney earned his first Golden Globe for his work in the Coen brothers’ 2000 Depression epic about Mississippi music, escaped prisoners and the Ku Klux Klan, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” The cheeky title, borrowed from the 1942 Hollywood satire, “Sullivan’s Travels,” refers to pretentious Hollywood producers who specialize in message movies.

On a less messagey note, Clooney played a divorce lawyer in another Coen brothers tale, “Intolerable Cruelty” (2003), easily matching wits with the gold-digging Catherine Zeta-Jones. Kids may know him best from the “Spy Kids” movies; he briefly impersonated the U.S. President in the third one.

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