Review of The Ides of March (2011) by Makrtik2 — 09 Oct 2011

This film is very dark and not very interesting... we like George Clooney and many of the other fine actors in this film. Unfortunately, the movie plods forward at a tedious tepid pace, slowly boringly and inexorably dissolving any reason for bothering to follow or care about he arc of any charter in the movie. If the intent of the plot of this movie was to be an unrelieved bummer without a cause, it is a success. If you were to paint this movie it would have to be as non-descript homely plain brown canvas, without a frame or even a dot... as it has no useful point to make. The simplistic and transparent plot is nothing more than an weak attempt to portray the axiom "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" . All of the characters start out as seemingly actually trying to do good, and to a character they all end up as their own diametrically opposed mirror image, actively trying their best to do bad... wow, point made.

This film is a glacially slow paced, depressing, and derivative remake of every potboiler political downfall story ever written. This film swings for the infield and can;t seem to even manage that, You can't make a home run movie using a whiffle ball plot. and plastic cookie cutter characters. The story breaks no new ground, mainly it breaks wind, leaving the wonderful talented cast to struggle with arcs that begin and end without a whimper, and embarrassingly weak and boring dialogue. The opening and closing scenes are are jejune junior high level bookends, restatements of the already all too painfully obvious plot... We meet and leave our failed protagonists standing largely exactly where we had the misfortune to meet them they where when first we saw them... but as their own now negative mirror images. The good now bad, the naive now jaded, and the new replacement groupie serving coffee and waiting to be noticed and despoiled. It's a great weekend, take a walk instead... or watch a rerun of Mr. Deeds Goes to Congress... you might like a character or two, and you won't need an anti-depression tablet.

Oh, just so you'll know when to be ready for the movies heart pounding pivotal scene... it involves an accidentally read text message... perhaps the socially redeeming merit here is as a cautionary tale on the dangers of texting while cheating. No, really, that's it. This film isn't likely to be a box office success, or a ballot box stuffer come Oscar time. In fact the only buzz for this film might be the sound of the film flapping on reel the theaters rewinding machine... Oops, that's right, they don't use those anymore, so maybe it will just be the sound of silence.