The Ides of March (2011)

The sooner you accept that it has nothing revelatory to tell you, the more you will enjoy George Clooney’s The Ides of March. That moment came for me just as the second act was coming to an end, and one of the movie’s several twists was revealed. At that point, I realized that this film was little more than an exciting story about the dark side of American politics. There’s nothing here that will be news to you, nor does it have much depth or impact to it besides the (considerable) surface-level thrills. But what a thrilling story this is, and a well-performed and directed one at that. It’s no surprise that it’s adapted from a play (Beau Willimon’s Farragut North), as it is little more than a series of conversations between several key characters, but these conversations build up to a nice little statement about how we, as a society, can’t have nice things. Particularly in politics. Will the central message of The Ides of March have people standing up in shock? No. But it works exceedingly well as pure entertainment.

Clooney himself plays Mike Morris, governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic nominee for the presidency. He’s taking a tour around various Ohio universities (with one glaring exception, ahem) giving speeches and talking to potential voters. He seems to be the frontrunner not only for the primaries, but also the general election… should he get there. One of the reasons for this success is the young Stephen Myers, the junior campaign manager who is widely seen as one of the best political minds in the country. He works alongside Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to help secure Morris’ nomination, and this is all going swimmingly until he gets a phone call from rival campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti). After he meets with Duffy, a series of events occur which involve the important Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright), the intern Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) and the reporter Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) which nearly spin everything out of control. Then, as you may have inferred from the title, some potential back-stabbing starts to happen.

If Clooney’s directorial work has taught us anything, it’s that he can get some pretty great performances out of his actors. His direction is eye-catching but never distracting, as he mostly focuses on capturing the brilliant work that his cast is putting onscreen. Gosling, who has apparently made it his mission to be in every movie these past few months, is great as usual here, playing a character who visibly hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in months. At times Myers seems like the campaign manager of the living dead, staring off into the middle distance while also trying to be as productive as possible. He eats, drinks and breathes the campaign, even if it’s eventually going to cost him his sanity. This seems to be the only world in which he can function. Hoffman (as his boss) is also a lot of fun to watch, especially in later scenes when he gets to holler and scream a bit more. It’s been a while since we’ve seen that side of him, especially since he was more or less tossed aside in the otherwise great Moneyball.

One of the more popular criticisms of The Ides of March seems to be that it simply doesn’t reach that next level that it likely needed to. Much of this blame can be placed at the feet of the material, which tells its story with confidence but doesn’t quite have the ambition necessary to make it the Social Network-type accomplishment that it so desperately wants to be. The Ides of March doesn’t really have anything to say that hasn’t been said before, and it’s not a story that audiences are going to connect with at a deep level. They’ll enjoy it, be intrigued by it and ultimately find it entertaining, but it lacks any big sequences that will stick in the minds of viewers for months, or even days, to come.

As a political thriller, The Ides of March is a fine example of how to do this kind of thing well. There are no gaping leaps in logic, no ridiculous twists and at no point does a character randomly pulling a gun out for no good reason. The entire narrative seems exceedingly plausible, the cast does a great job of selling it, and Clooney’s direction is typically strong. Since it does all of this so, so well, it would be wrong of me to overly-penalize it simply because it doesn’t have that extra kick which would make it a great film. When The Ides of March is complete, you just want to go up to the screen, pat it on the back and congratulate it on a job well done.

Grade: B