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The Ides Of March

★★★★☆

Directed by: George Clooney

Written by: George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Beau Willimon

Based on the Play “Farragut North” by: Beau Willimon

A lot of political thrillers tend to descend into non-political thriller territory, sooner or later. You can tell the moment this happens whenever a gun is produced or a car chase looms imminent. It’s not bad, per se, for political thrillers to have stakes high enough for them to be spine-tinglers but politics has its own special kind of tension built-in and I think the exploitation of that facet is under-utilized.

Which may explain why I liked The Ides of March as much as I did. Because this is a movie about the game, the lifestyle, the scope of politics which uses human beings as much as ideas in a frankly chilling battle between the public good (also acting as proxy for morality) and raw acquisition of power. That both are intertwined is merely the reality, not necessarily a philosophical point whose merits or defects are worthy of merit in this context.

So we are introduced to Mike Morris (played with magnetic charisma by George Clooney), a governor in an Ohio primary trying to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for Presidential candidate. His top two aides are Paul (played with volumes of implied character by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Stephen (played with studly swagger by Ryan Gosling). They have the candidate that ought to win: He’s got good ideas, good appeal; a good chance of defeating whatever candidate the Republicans try to throw at him. But he just needs a bit of a boost to go the rest of the way and Paul thinks a previously dropped-out Senator who holds a significant number of delegates in check could provide that winning boost if he can convince him to throw support to Morris.

While Paul is trying to woo the Senator, Morris’ campaign manager, Tom (played with an affably sinister charm by Paul Giamatti), calls Stephen to set up a meeting. It’s risky for Stephen to meet the other campaign guys; there are regulations and social conventions that limit the kind of direct contact they can have. But Stephen decides to go for it anyway. At the secret meeting, Tom offers Stephen a position on the opposing team. He says they have the Senator already sewn up and they plan to get a lot of open primary support from the Republican voters in Ohio because the GOP worries they won’t be able to take Morris in the main election. Stephen declines but leaves the meeting rattled.

Meanwhile Stephen meets a girl, Molly (played with a not-quite-convincing awkward confidence by Evan Rachel Wood), a staffer on the campaign, and begins an affair with her. But Molly has a secret that threatens the entire campaign and as the stakes ratchet up and the election gets closer, Stephen’s paranoia starts to show signs of being not misguided at all.

What works best is that this never gets into cornball shootout in a parking garage or attempt-on-someone’s-life territory. There is plenty of suspense inherent in the politics and the web of interpersonal relationships that The Ides of March doesn’t need gimmicks like knife fights or stolen nuclear launch codes. The basic plot is riveting and the acting is either quite good or absolutely top notch (Gosling and Wood, notably, hold their own enough to not stand out against wonderful performances by folks we’ve come to expect good things from like Hoffman and Giamatti). The ending is unexpected and strangely satisfying, if cynical and dark overall.

There are a handful of issues here and there: There is a lot of set-up to be done early in the movie and the script is kind of jarringly transparent about it. Stephen’s character is frustrating as a protagonist because as the noose tightens around him he begins to act inconsistently with what we’ve been led to believe about him, going from swagger to outright jerk to mystifyingly ruthless by the final credits. A more accomplished actor (like, say, Giamatti) might have sold the transition better, but I guess it was more important that Stephen be young and pretty than convincing. There are also a few minor plot hiccups—not holes really, just oversights which are noticeable to the audience but not necessarily impacting on the story. Also the chemistry between Wood and Gosling never quite hits the notes I think it was intended. Coming off a recent viewing of The Adjustment Bureau where Matt Damon and Emily Blunt show how to make onscreen magic happen, it feels a little flat.

But there is plenty to recommend The Ides of March as well. Clooney’s direction is really top shelf here, and he makes great use of silence in the film, of unheard dialogue especially, to convey messages by relying on his actors rather than on the dialogue writing. It works remarkably. There are also a ton of memorable speeches by Paul and Morris, among others.

It did strike me as funny that Clooney, as Mike Morris, looked like a genuine political candidate and, in fact, came across as ironically less rehearsed than several actual politicians in the real-life campaigns going on right now often do. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of Morris’ political ideals were mirrors of Clooney’s own and it’s always disheartening to realize that fictional politicians are more inspiring than real candidates at least 95% of the time.

Overall, I enjoyed The Ides of March quite a bit. It’s not without a few issues here and there and I’m sure diehard GOP viewers will disdain what can occasionally sound like a Democratic propaganda film, but it’s a tight thriller that doesn’t cheap out and showcases great direction and some fine acting. Sounds like everything you need for a solid bout of entertainment. Or, for that matter, politics.

from No Thief Like a Bad Movie — February 21, 2012 at 10:29AM