Star power drives political ‘Ides’ - Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Star power drives political ‘Ides’

Modern American politics is a venomous and corrosive sinkhole where honesty and idealism go to die a slow and painful death.

But you know that already.

As such, none of the unsparing truths in “The Ides of March” will come as much of a shock.

Still, film fans who can stomach the disheartening real-world echoes of the themes at play here will get a huge kick out of the razor-sharp work of a quartet of actors at the top of their games — three old pros and a young talent on a meteoric rise.

The title’s pointed reference to the classic betrayal of Julius Caesar by his erstwhile pal Brutus is no accident.

Betrayal is, in fact, what makes the film hum — mainly betrayal perpetrated upon, and later perpetrated by, Stephen Myers (Ryan Gosling), chief strategist for presidential candidate Gov. Mike Morris (George Clooney).

The narrative unfolds across a couple of weeks during a tough Democratic primary battle in Ohio pitting the unbelievably progressive Morris (he’s an atheist — yow!) against a much older, more traditional warhorse.

If Myers and his boss, campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), can help Morris win Ohio and its more than 300 primary delegates, they can sew up the Democratic presidential nomination.

At the outset, Myers is a true believer. “You really buy all this ‘take back the country’ crap,” someone tells him. He readily acknowledges chugging the Morris Kool-Aid: “He’s the only one who can make a difference.”

The first part of the film is a straightforward look inside a political campaign on the rise. But things change after Myers gets a phone call from Zara’s opposite number, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), the crusty, battle-hardened campaign manager for Morris’ opponent.

That call sets in motion a chain of events that tightens around Myers like a noose, even as his life is further complicated by the flirty young intern (the luminous Evan Rachel Wood) sharing his bed, who eventually reveals a twisted secret that lights the fuse on a dynamite final half-hour.

The magnetic Gosling is Hollywood’s current “It” boy, but unlike others who have briefly held that title, he deserves to be. He’s a major talent in the making, with a cool, deadpan outer shell over a roiling, molten core that suggests a young, less sociopathic Clint Eastwood.

Over the course of the film, he lives a young actor’s dream, getting the chance to go one-on-one with Hoffman, Giamatti and Clooney, in that order, in taut, riveting confrontations that drip with cutthroat ego and ruthless, naked power lust.

Although the principals are in the Democratic camp, there’s nothing overtly partisan about the film. Clooney, who not only stars but also directed and co-wrote the script, clearly has healthy disdain for an entire political process that publicly heralds words such as “values,” “dignity” and “integrity” while privately wallowing in cynicism, vanity and self-aggrandizement.

In scale and scope, the film is more claustrophobic and constricted than most entries in this genre. After all, the backdrop is a narrow slice of a one-state party primary, not a florid national presidential campaign writ in large, bold strokes.

That may be the point. Right up to its final ambiguous camera shot, “The Ides of March” feels built to underscore how small-minded and petty our political system has become.

Then again, you could probably make a pretty good argument that it’s always been that way.