If you’re looking for a movie that will help you mold your confused emotions about global issues into something coherently cynical, “Ides of March,” directed by George Clooney, who also acts in the movie, probably won’t do the trick. Despite the clear parallels drawn between President Obama and Clooney’s Mike Morris, “Ides” doesn’t try to say anything fresh about contemporary politics, opting instead for a stale loss-of-innocence formula.

The film begins in the middle of a Democratic primary in Ohio, with Morris and some other guy (not important) vying for the party ticket. Ryan Gosling plays Stephen Myers, a young, idealistic higher-up in Morris’ fictional campaign, struggling to keep up with the dirty politics that occur every day. Old pros like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, and Marisa Tomei laugh in his face before turning up the heat, and he’s got to wiggle his way through or get sent packing to a lobbying firm.

The early scenes are awesome: we watch great actors attack each other with sharp lines, painting a political world where backstabbing is a boring routine. The dialogue isn’t as fast as in last year’s “The Social Network,” but it’s just as good at turning every possible type of conversation into a brutal dick-measuring contest, all with a casual ring of authenticity. Clooney’s direction helps combat the uneasy feelings, acting like a relaxed hand tightening the noose. “Ides” might be the quietest movie you’ll see all year–even a turbulent airplane doesn’t make much noise–and the stifling silence makes every scene tantalizingly claustrophobic.

In the final stretch, however, Clooney doesn’t quite make good on his promises. There are a couple of scandals in the plot of “Ides,” and none are surprising or creative. What is at stake isn’t American politics or Morris’ campaign, but Myers’s soul. When that becomes clear, so does the trajectory of the rest of the film. The touch remains soft and nuanced, with no overt Oscar grandstanding, but it’s still a little disappointing that such smart characters act in such predictable ways. Instead of working overtime to dig himself out after political backstabbing and game playing leaves him in the cold, Myers spends a lot of time walking, driving, brooding, kind of like in that other movie Gosling is in.

Morris himself virtually disappears from the second half for no discernible reason; despite Clooney’s best efforts to work hints of exhaustion and desperation into his charm as the pressure on the campaign heats up, Morris is less of a character than a projection of every ridiculous liberal fantasy the writers could come up with. Atheist! No more oil! No more death penalty! Morris himself never appears in “Farragut North,” the play “Ides” is based on, and it probably should have stayed that way.

At one point late in the film, Giamatti’s character tells Myers to go into entertainment or business and leave politics to the real stone cold killas’, but there’s no reason this movie couldn’t be set in either of those fields. With some tweaking, it could be set at a burger joint or your local library. The art of the triple-quadruple-screw-over is a pretty ubiquitous part of human life, and as cynical as “Ides” pretends to be, it ends up looking adorable in how earnestly it tries to shock us with bitter truisms.