The ambitious if idealistic campaign manager (Ryan Gosling) of a Democratic presidential candidate (George Clooney) is determined that his candidate wins because he believes in him as the right man to run the country. But as is well known, ambition and power corrupt and takes no prisoners and souls are sold to the Devil for a lot less. This marvelous film encapsulates everything that is wrong with American politics today. Is there anyone alive so naive as to believe the road to the White House is not littered with deceit, backroom deals, blackmail, moral hypocrisy and worse on both sides? That it doesn't really matter who the President is? What's so disturbing about this film is not the accuracy but that we the voters are willingly part and parcel of this manipulation. Clooney not only stars but directed, co-wrote and produced. His direction is assured and his performance is deceptively astute. The first rate score is by Alexandre Desplat. The cast is superlative all the way down the line from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti as veteran campaign managers who know the score, Marisa Tomei as a wily political journalist, Jeffrey Wright as an ambitious U.S. senator, Jennifer Ehle as Clooney's wife and Evan Rachel Wood, the only true innocent in the film, as the intern who suffers the consequences of politics' poisonous fingers.
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