Movie Review: The Ides of March

That power corrupts is not something new. And actor-director George Clooney, with The Ides of March, serves an engaging, if a tad simplistic, political drama adapted from the Beau Willimon's play Farragut North that "is about the behind-the-scenes intrigues and conspiracies, the luring and blackmailing, the lies and betrayals, the shifting loyalties and sexual indiscretions and, most of all, the small errors that can add up to enormous tragedies." Politics, as we all know, is not squeaky-clean, and Ryan Gosling plays it beautifully, delivering a top-notch performance as the upright and ambitious junior campaign manager who gradually figures out the tricks of the trade in order to survive in the field. The Ides of March is no perfect allegory of the modern American politics, but, under the able of hands of Clooney, it is not boring either.