"The Ides of March" -- Reviewed.

It has been awhile since I’ve seen a political thriller. Heck, I don’t believe this even classifies as such. It is more a political drama. Enter Ryan Gosling’s staffer Steven Meyers. Meyers is an ambitious, passionate, and idealistic 30 year old who works for George Clooney’s presidential candidate, Governor Mike Morris.

As the story unfolds, we get a sense of who Meyers really is and when we get that we come to understand that he is more ambitious himself than passionate about the candidate he is attempting to put up as the potential President of the United States.

Meyers makes the mistake of divulging his meeting with an opposing staffer, Paul Giamatti’s character Tom Duffy, with his boss, Paul Zara, which played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Still following? Good. Of course once a secret is found out of Meyers and Molly Stearns' (Evan Rachel Wood) relationship, it complicate things further.

Ideologies are questioned and redefined as through the games of politics, integrity will be challenged and then lost. When this occurs, true motivations are brought to an ugly light and when we see Meyers’ true motivation we are surprisingly sympathetic because most of us would make the same choices as he did. We say ‘for the greater good’ but we end up doing ‘for the greater good of ourselves’.

This is a solid film with top notch acting and excellent screenwriting. The film has a Tomatometer of 85% with much of the critics praising the acting and tale of morality. The film is rated R for pervasive language.

Overall Grade: A