Movie Review: Ides of March

Politics by its very nature is blood sport.  There is charge and counter-charge mixed with subterfuge and intrigue.  It is not a sport for the timid.  Nor is making a political movie.  You either succeed or fail miserably.

The movie, Ides of March, does succeed on a couple of levels.  It is good, but not masterful.  The picture captures the essence of the big political operation.  It scores with the nuances of the political ground game.  Its characters make the movie.

The term “Ides” represents the fifteenth day of the month.  Coincidently, it marks the day in which Brutus and his cabal assassinates Julius Caesar in 44 BC.  An interesting analogy for this movie.

The movie stars George Clooney as Presidential candidate Mike Morris.  As the big draw he gives his usual solid performance.  He also directed the pic.  Ryan Gosling plays the antagonist, Stephen Meyers and provides an overly convincing performance as a smarmy political operative working for Morris.  In fact, so well done that he might be forever typecast in your mind as a treacherous slime dog politico.

The best performance was turned in by the great Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the manager of the Morris campaign, Paul Zara.  He provides a better and more realistic political role than his performance in Charlie Wilsons War.  His “Loyalty” speech is extremely well done and spot on.

Paul Giamatti as the opposing candidate’s chief operator is wickedly good.  Marisa Tomei provides a believable role as a reporter/journalist, so much so you hardly become aware it is she.

Jeffrey Wright plays Senator Thompson who the Morris campaign seeks his endorsement gives a solid rendition.  While Evan Rachel Wood provides a likeable, but sad performance as the ubiquitous political nymph.

The movie chronicles the mechanizations of the campaign during the democrat presidential primary race in Ohio.  Unfortunately, Candidate Morris foists a lot of ecotopian pabulum on the movie going audience.  Added in are a number of other liberal ideas as well.  Then again, it is a Democrat primary.

Overall, the film is not as good as other fictional political campaign works such as The Candidate (1972) starring Robert Redford and Peter Boyle (1935-2006).  That film is a classic.  It doesn’t pick up enough of the intrigue or political operations that a film like Power (1986) does.  That film had an all-star cast of Richard Gere, Gene Hackman, Denzel Washington, Julie Christie, Kate Capshaw, and E.G. Marshall (1914-1998).

Ides of March is a good film geared toward political junkies and rates two and half stars out of five.