It takes a certain degree of nerve to title a film The Ides of March—not merely because it invites Shakespearian comparisons but, more particularly, because the word that most commonly precedes the calendric phrase in the English-speaking world is "beware." George Clooney has nonetheless taken this gamble in his latest directorial outing, a political fable adapted from the Beau Willimon play Farragut North (itself named, more modestly, after a downtown Washington, DC Metro station).