With its release, The Ides of March sees George Clooney taking the director’s chair for the fourth time. Like his 2005 film, Good Night, and Good Luck, Clooney returns with another movie that focuses on politics. But what lets him down this time is a predictable narrative and clumsy genre placing.
Set in Cincinnati, we meet the idealistic Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling), a political whizz-kid who works for controversial man-of-the-moment Mike Morris (George Clooney). With his leftist stance on abortion, gay marriage and religion, his battle for presidency is a contentious issue as he takes on a right-wing Bible basher. But as Meyers’ relationship with an intern deepens, is Morris everything he appears to be?
After Frost/Nixon, The Thick of It and The West Wing, can the backstabbing, infighting, sacrificing and press spinning of politics really shock an audience? Clooney certainly thinks so as he directs, stars in, produces and co-writes this new film. Based on Beau Willimon’s play Farragut North, Clooney combines fiction with loose fact in order to create a tense political thriller. However, the script feels like it could do with more twists, rather than just the one as at times the action is more like another political drama rather than a tense potboiler. Feeling more like yesterday’s news, Ides struggles to compete with the abundance of political heavyweight movies already out there. But where it does shine is in its casting. Gosling plays the career driven lefty who is let down by the man he believes in. His naïveté in the face of politics is endearing but it’s his descent into political infighting which is the most shocking as he sells his soul in order to hang onto his job. Clooney has managed to create a fairly well informed film that touches on our current economic climate and dishonest political figures, but it won’t stand the test of time.