Roeper's review of "All the King's Men"

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'All the King's Men' a royal disappointment
September 22, 2006
BY RICHARD ROEPER Sun-Times Columnist
When Sean Penn is acting, he's the best of his generation. When Sean Penn is ACTING, he's still mesmerizing and great fun, even though it's apparent he's taken a step back from a troublesome script or an incomplete character and he's decided to just floor it and leave his supporting players in the dust, gaping and choking on his boundless talent.
Penn seems to have chosen the latter route with his twangy, arm-waving, over-the-top and through-the-swamp portrayal of a populist Louisiana activist turned ruthless politician in "All the King's Men," a gigantic misfire that finally limps into theaters after a delay of nearly a year, and enough Internet-fueled rumors about the troubled production to crash Google for an hour.
Alas, the bad buzz turns out to be mostly accurate. Despite the efforts of writer-director Steve Zaillian (an Oscar-winning screenwriter for "Schindler's List") and a half-dozen actors who regularly hear their names announced on Oscar nomination day, this remake of the 1949 Best Picture winner (which was an adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, inspired by real-life Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long) is an unholy mess. That we occasionally get a glimpse of the crackling entertainment this movie could have been only makes it more frustrating when the story and the performances lapse into overwrought melodrama seasoned with some deep Southern camp.
ALL THE KING'S MEN (PG-13)
Critic's rating: **
Willie Stark: Sean Penn
Jack Burden: Jude Law
Anne Stanton: Kate Winslet
Sadie Burke: Patricia Clarkson
Tiny Duffy: James Gandolfini
Adam Stanton: Mark Ruffalo
Judge Montague Irwin: Anthony Hopkins
Mrs. Burden: Kathy Baker
Columbia Pictures presents a film written and directed by Steven Zaillian. Based on the novel by Robert Penn Warren. Running time: 129 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for an intense sequence of violence, sexual content and partial nudity).

Penn steps into the Broderick Crawford role as Willie Stark, a small-time Louisiana politician who drinks orange soda pop because his wife "doesn't favor drinking." When we first meet Stark, he's a nobody -- small-time county employee fighting to keep a schoolhouse construction contract out of the hands of the good ol' boy network.
Stark loses that battle, and he's just about out of local politics when the schoolhouse collapses, and children are killed -- and the big boys from Baton Rouge who run things see Willie Stark as the poster boy for fighting the system. Kingmaker Tiny Duffy (James Gandolfini, struggling mightily to lose the Jersey accent and losing that struggle) pays Willie a visit and tells him to forget about running for mayor of his town -- he can be the next guvnuh of Loozeeanah. Soon Willie is on the road, addressing meager crowds while reading a standard stump speech prepped by Tiny and campaign adviser Sadie Burke (Patricia Clarkson).
To this point, Penn has pretty much played it straight and low-key.
Willie Stark is earnest and humble, and he believes the truth will set you free and win votes. He doesn't drink and he's faithful to his wife, and there you have it. But when Stark learns he's been selected as a patsy to split the "hick vote" so the city slicker candidate can cruise into the governor's mansion, he's like Bruce Banner turning into the Incredible Hulk. At a county fair, he tosses aside the prepared manuscript and delivers a thundering, rage-filled speech so filled with passion and theatrics that you expect him to start speaking in tongues. It's the first of about a half-dozen such speeches in the film, and you can almost see the crew on the sidelines, waiting to burst into applause when Penn finishes yet another astonishing monologue. It's a great performance. It's a one-man show.
And that's when "All the King's Men" takes a wrong turn and never finds it way back to the main road.
It's not enough for Willie to point his finger at Tiny during that first impassioned speech, and for Tiny to glower at him while trying to figure out a way off the stage. No, we have to see Tiny falling off the stage and landing in a pile of pig slop. Talk about piling it on.
Cue the montage of Willie Stark speeches, with the crowds growing larger at every stop and the media falling in love with this nobody from nowhere. Before you can say flash-forward, Stark is ensconced in the governor's mansion, with Tiny as his lieutenant governor and a steady parade of bimbo mistresses taking the elevator to his penthouse apartment to join him from a drink and a romp.
Wait a minute. What happened to the Willie who was a teetotaling, faithful husband, a pure-hearted savior dedicated to the people? Where'd this guy come from?
That's the hole in the center of "All the King's Men." Instead of showing us Stark's plunge into the very pig slop he pledged to avoid, Zaillian gives us a muddled, chronologically jumbled tangle of stories involving newspaperman Jack Burden (Jude Law), who is hired by Stark to dig up dirt on an influential judge (Anthony Hopkins), who just happens to be Jack's godfather. Along the way, we meet Jack's first sweetheart (Kate Winslet) and her brother (Mark Ruffalo), whose father was the last truly great governor of Louisiana.
The casting of three Brits in key roles here -- why? Law tries a Southern accent and does OK at best. Winslet does her standard-issue Midwest American accent. Hopkins is an old lion who doesn't even try to sound like he's from anywhere but Wales. If you don't care for that, then the hell with you.
As Jack and his friends and family get caught up in Stark's world, as the tawdry affairs and the suicidal turns and the scandals mount, James Horner's soundtrack pounds away with such fervor that we keep waiting for God himself to appear. Nor does it help that Zaillian has shifted the story from the 1930s to the late 1940s and early 1950s. Stark's original appeal as a candidate makes a lot more sense against the backdrop of the Depression than in the post-war era.
"All the King's Men" is miscast. The soundtrack is awful. The storyline is confusing. The cinematography is too slick and pretty, when we should be bathed in a sultry, sweaty, sticky, gritty atmosphere. And the ending, with symbolism laid atop symbolism, is deadly.
That Sean Penn, though: He can act.

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Topic - Roeper's review of "All the King's Men" - rico 11:24:05 09/22/06 (0)

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