The Ides of March Review

Nobody in this campaign is corrupted, because everyone arrives already compromised, and the film mistakes that flat cynicism for insight. Clooney directs with real economy, and Phedon Papamichael gives him two images worth keeping: Gosling shrinking in front of an enormous backlit flag on a rally stage, and a whispered argument staged in silhouette through a kitchen doorway while a speech carries on in the next room.

The cast is the draw. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti circle each other as rival managers who treat loyalty as a currency, and Hoffman's speech about the one thing he cannot forgive is the best writing in the picture. Gosling's descent works because he plays Stephen as a true believer with a press secretary's vanity rather than a naif.

What limits it is the plot engine. Beau Willimon's play turned on an intern and a pregnancy, and the film keeps that device, so a story about political machinery ends up settled by a personal scandal and a bottle of pills. Evan Rachel Wood is stuck carrying the whole of it. Clooney's candidate, meanwhile, says only what the script needs him to say, which leaves the final betrayal costing Stephen nothing he seemed to believe.