Director: George Clooney
Writers: George Clooney,
Grant Heslov, Beau Willimon (also play “Farragut North”)
Starring: Ryan Gosling,
George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, Marisa
Tomei, Jeffrey Wright, Max Minghella, Jennifer Ehle, Gregory Itzin
George Clooney’s “The Ides
of March” might look like a good exposé on the corruption inherent in the
political process, but under some scrutiny it falls apart as dramatic fiction. Is corruption inevitable in the
political process? It is when there is a plot to serve, that’s for sure.
Clooney has produced some
surprisingly good movies for a movie star that still carries the spotlight like
a star and not a director and writer. I don’t know if the blame lies in the
source material, a play by co-screenwriter Beau Willimon, but Clooney and his
writing and producing partner Grant Heslov should’ve fixed the story’s problems
when writing their screenplay. They miss a huge opportunity to really skewer
the political process in order to skewer their character’s unlikely poor
decisions.
Supposedly the story loosely
parallels the failed Democratic Primary run by Howard Dean. I wonder which of
the campaign managers this came from, the one that derived the Philip Seymour
Hoffman character or the Ryan Gosling one. I would think it was the person that
Hoffman was based on. His would’ve been a more interesting story than Gosling’s.
Gosling’s character seemed to make decisions based upon the turns the plot
needed to take rather than ones that grew naturally from the character.
Although, it is Hoffman’s character that makes the biggest turn for plot
reasons alone.
The movie doesn’t feel
organic. Clooney’s presidential hopeful never seems to have the teeth he really
needs. That could’ve been an interesting take in itself. Who really has the
teeth in a campaign if it isn’t the actual candidate? Gosling’s character is
painted into a box, which must been done, but his solution for getting out
doesn’t seem to be the one the character they’ve built would choose.
And, while I don’t doubt for
a second that a presidential hopeful would be foolhardy enough to sleep with an
intern, I find it hard to believe he would make the mistake of sleeping with
the specific intern he does here. Don’t try arguing that he might not have
known who she was. There’s no way
on Earth that person could’ve worked on his campaign without him knowing it.
There would’ve been favors involved, which would make another interesting
storyline they could’ve followed but didn’t. I believe the term “epic fail”
might be appropriate to describe this film.
No comments:
Post a Comment