The Ides of March

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Myself

For a political drama about corrupted ideals, power struggles and moral grey areas this film is surprisingly straight forward. Although it hides it well beneath a sea of fast talking mumbo jumbo and quietly confident performance.

Once again George Clooney cannot resist throwing in a jazz performance in his film. I feel like he slipped some of his own political views into the background there too... The foreground here is the actors but as we've seen before he can pull off a fine looking film with the best of them.

It's the second film in as many months that Ryan Gosling takes centre stage but he's playing a very different character from in Drive. He hardly stares at all in this. Probably because he's too busy talking. He has a classic character arc from idealised innocence to understanding and it's done in a reasonably entertaining way too.

And that's what I'd say about the film as a whole. Reasonable entertaining. Slickly made, probably not my cup of tea but I did enjoy it for what it was.