The Ides of March

No, The Ides of March has nothing to do with Julius Caesar, the person or the Shakespeare play. Speaking of Shakespeare, he's the focus of Anonymous, but that's later this month and The Ides of March is now.

I know, it's October, but still...

In his fourth time as director, George Clooney's joined forces with co-writer Grant Heslov and playwright Beau Willimon in turning the latter's play Farragut North into a cinema piece.

Clooney is also Mike Morris, governor of Pennsylvania running to be the Democratic Candidate for President. Helping to run the campaign is Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling). Meyers believes he can run a fair, clean campaign because Morris is fair and clean. Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), the other guy's campaign manager, offers Meyers a spot on that campaign. This sets off a chain of events that will kill Meyers' optimism.

So class, what do we learn in this civics class? Well, it does say that fair, clean politics are not only dead, but have never existed. But I bet you knew that. It's on the news every night.

But then again, it's the cast that makes this hard lesson fresh. Together, they make up an impressive ensemble of characters neither shady nor honest. As Meyers, Gosling's performance capably guides the audience through the story as his optimism cracks. He and his co-stars perform so well that this doesn't stand out as a stage play on film.

It starts off slow, but once The Ides of March roll in, it can get capably tense. This is one Civics Class that you'd want to keep attention to.