Movie Review: Ides of March

I am extremely late in reviewing this movie even though I saw it weeks ago. [Couldn’t find a place for it last week during Halloween week.] And yet I feel that’s unfair as it’s actually one of the better movies in theaters you could watch right now. It’s not as viscerally crowd pleasing as Moneyball or as well organized as Contagion (two other adult oriented movies starring some Ocean’s 11 members) but it’s out there, and deserves a lot more attention than it got when it opened in early October. By now, the movie is considered a box office non-starter and got only a pretty good critical response, so let me offer one last plea for audiences to consider watching it…before it’s on DVD in a few months.

What Works: It’s a sharp script, a great cast, it’s one of the only movies this year that will cover politics, and so what more could Alabama Liberal ask for in a movie? Well, I could nitpick this film to death (and will mention a few small problems) but I won’t. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti are perfectly cast as rival campaign managers. And George Clooney–by now an underrated actor–is equally good as a snakish politician (I know, such a shocker those exist).

What Doesn’t Work: I can’t say that Ryan Gosling is entirely convincing as a supposedly underhanded campaign communications director. He looks a little uncomfortable when talking political facts. Also, by focusing exclusively on an Ohio presidential primary, the movie feels a little disconnected from the political reality out there right now. The word “Tea Party” is not mentioned once, for example. Still, the movie feels far more realistic than unrealistic (it does its best to nail the corrosively partisan and bitter nature of contemporary politics)…just might have been more realistic five years ago, but it’s hard to fault a movie for that as the lag time between a finished script and a released movie is so long.

What I Would Have Done Differently: I read that initially Clooney wanted to make a movie about a Republican presidential nomination where an evangelist comes to lead it but eventually falls out of favor by saying things like “Jesus wouldn’t support guns” and “I’m pro-life, meaning I’m against war and the death penalty.” I would have much rather watched that movie as it seems to have more on its mind (“Ides of March” essentially says politicians are full of shit…not exactly profound), and would have encouraged Clooney to make that instead of compromising his vision with this movie based off the play “Farragut North.”