Ides of March is a new political thriller from George Clooney who both starred in and directed this one. The movie has a wonderful cast which includes Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ryan Gosling and Marisa Tomei.
The movie revolves around former Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney) who is now neck and neck with another Democrat for the Presidential nomination. The race has come down to winning the state of Ohio which is the setting for most of the movie. Helping Morris obtain the nomination is his campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), one of the best in his field and a fanatic about loyalty from his people, and Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), an idealistic, even naive press secretary for Morris. Myers soon learns that there is nothing out-of-bounds when it comes to politics and love, at least not at this level.
With a cast like this one, it should come as no surprise that the acting performances in this movie are top notch. Living in Washington myself, I really felt they nailed the whole look, feel and attitude of a political campaign. Not to mention there is plenty of chess playing between all parties in this one from all-sides – keeping the general plot interesting. What the movie doesn’t do is leave you with a pleasant feeling with our overall political process; in fact, it is pretty downright depressing. By the end of the movie, you dislike all the characters and the lengths they go to get what they want which generally is a different agenda from what anyone else wants… yeah like I said, they seemed to nail the overall political environment of Washington these days.
The only downside for this movie, I am not really sure you need to spend the price of a movie ticket when you can turn on your TV and watch the news for free but still it might be worth it just to see all these great actors work off one another, especially the trio of Hoffman, Gosling and Giamatti.
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