For a movie claiming to be a crackerjack political thriller,
The Ides of March feels pretty
light. There is much evidence that
director George Clooney had some ambition of making The Godfather of the political world, and like so many before him,
he has failed. Ryan Gosling plays a
clever and idealistic operator working for presidential candidate Clooney, and who
naturally gets a wake-up call when he finds out his man isn’t as perfect as he
thought. Since Gosling’s character is so
devoid of personality and humanity (save for a meager interest in bedding
campaign workers), it’s impossible to see any tragedy in his corruption, as we
did with his prototype, Michael Corleone, whom we actually saw living a normal
life before being drawn into the family business. The best thing in the movie unfortunately
gets the least amount of screen time; a rivalry between opposing campaign
managers played by the equally great Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour
Hoffman. The rest is essentially one
fairly sad cliché after another; even down to the sweet intern who gets seduced
and impregnated by the candidate. While
still naïve, Clooney does deserve some points for portraying a Democratic
politician as corrupt, I suppose; even though it’s clearly a move to deflect
criticism for using his film to push ideology.
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