Directed by George Clooney

All the reporters love you. Even the reporters that hate you still love you.


Stephen (Ryan Gosling) works as a campaign manager for Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney). Stephen believes in his idealistic ways of working, and he believes in Morris a lot, therefore wants him to be President at any cost. Stephen gets a call from opponent campaign manager, plus something else goes wrong in Morris campaign and the girl Molly (Evan Rachel Wood) he was having romance with, has a secret that would shake every bit out of him. 

The film goes into exploiting the behind the scene activities in Politics, lots of manipulation and scripting of speeches, plus how much your loyalty is questioned irrevalent of what kind of person you are who is questioning it. 

I like how well the framing and lighting is done in the film, and some great camera-work too. Ryan Gosling is excellent in a character who despite believing in his morals commits few mistakes to be made to question, he has to chose between his job, and the morals he prefers to have while working. And, he does make a right choice. 

George Clooney is more of a supporting actor in the film, and very efficient. The kind of greyness his character holds is so invisibile (as most of his scenes are to enact the speeches written for him by Stephen's team), that one has to applaud the writing of his character especially for this result. Infact, the writing as a whole is pretty impressive, never getting preachy which a plot like this would easily do. (One of the reasons I felt Raajneeti looks so small in front of this film)

Almost every actor in the film has got that one big scene to get noticed, Duffy (Paul Giamatti) has that one scene with Stephen where he tells why he can't hire him now when he was interested to do so before. Its a scene where you have to agree with the reasons the opponent campaigner Duffy gives to Stephen. 

Evan Rachel Wood brings some of the light romantic moments in the film, especially the two sequences, both with Stephens, one in his cabin as he tries to ask her out or she makes him ask her out, and other when they are in a restaurant. 

Paul (Phillip Hoffman) is very good in a supporting role, especially the sequence where he questions the loyalty of Stephens, or the silent sequence with Morris in car. 

Ida (Marisa Tomei) and Ben (Max Minghella) were good in their small roles.


Overall, The Ides of March is a very good film for the way it portrays behind the activities of politics without getting over-board, and how a single person's life gets affected through some of his own wrong steps taken, and the rest by his own colleagues, yet he finds his way through in a place he has learned is very dirty and his idealistic approach won't help him no longer.