9. Ides Of March
What We Got: A Derivative Sexed-up Political Melodrama
What It Should've Been: What It Was In The First Third; A Political Campaign Procedural,
detailing the nature of election politics. George Clooney stars and directs a politically minded thriller with Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, sounds like a winner. Well, it was... for the first third or so of the running time when the audience was a fly-on-the wall to the ins-and-outs of American Electoral Politics and Campaigning. And then things start going south, literally and figuratively. This movie suffers doing a drastic and jarring shift in genre right when things were getting interesting in the chess game of a bi-partisen general election. What could've been a statement movie about the hypocritical and combative nature of getting elected to high office, instead turns into a sleazy portrayal of sex and politics; a story we have seen played out, fictionally and in reality, hundreds of times before. I especially love the
Editing Room's Script of the movie, pointing out that Gosling's Campaign manager seemingly drops I.Q points as the film progresses. He starts off as a seemingly completely in-control knows-the-ropes campaign manager, and then little by little he is reduced to a dim-witted, face-palming, mistake prone imbecile. What could've been a fictionalized version of the methodical documentary the 'War Room', which actually delved into the intricate and engaging 24/7 operations of an election cycle, turns just into your sex-scandal ridden political thriller of the week.