The Ides of March

Is The Ides of March the first movie of 2011 to disappoint its way out of the Oscar race?

Ryan Gosling stars as Stephen Myers - a hot shot political operative working for his dream candidate, Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney). The Governor is locked in a heated presidential primary battle in Ohio with a southern senator, and the winner likely is to go on to become the Democrats nominee.

Just as the campaign's director, Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), heads out of the state in an attempt to secure a major endorsement, Stephen receives an invitation to meet with the rival campaign's director, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti). He shouldn't do it, but, when he does, the meeting changes everything for Stephen and the campaign.

Is Stephen ready for the revelations and events that are coming?

The Ides of March is one of those movies that might suffer from the expectations game. On the surface, it feels like the movie will be a huge political thriller with intense exchanges between the characters, all sorts of twists and turns that throw the election into the balance and more. That would be a more traditional, mainstream way to make this movie.

While the audience gets some of that, The Ides of March is not really a political thriller, which puts it into the category of acquired taste. It's a solid story about power, taking it, using it, having it, and leveraging it.

Plus, it is a story about going from idealistic to jaded. In that sense, it's a coming of age story or borderline character study, which loses some of its punch because we know Stephen has been around enough to have learned the lessons he supposedly learns here.

Overall, The Ides of March is good, but not spectacular. Written by Clooney (who also directed), Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon (who wrote the original play, Farragut North), the movie doesn't have any truly memorable, shocking, enticing dialogue, which I would expect from something adapted from a theatrical production.

Much like the rest of the movie, it's not horribly written, but it's not amazing, when you can see where amazing is possible. These are interesting, complicated characters with fantastic actors in every role, but none of them gets something mindblowing to do.

As director, Clooney needs to pick up the pace a bit. Granted, the script needs more detail and dialogue (we need to know more about these characters, where they came from, how the campaign developed), but The Ides of March feels like it is floating along without the drama and urgency of a primary battle.

Plus, all of the Barack Obama imagery is distracting. Much of the Governor Morris campaign paraphernalia mimics President Obama's (especially the iconic Hope poster). Seeing one makes you giggle and get the joke, but Clooney keeps going back to it so much it takes the audience out of the movie. Movies are alternate realities, but Clooney keeps trying to remind us we are watching a movie. Instead of sucking us in, he is sucking us out.

The Ides of March was supposed to be a big time Oscar contender, but I think it might fade away like Newt Gingrich's campaign for President.

The Ides of March is rated R for pervasive language