Film Review: All The King's Men (2006) F

Date Viewed: 9/28/06
Venue: DGA

It's always bad news when a studio pushes a film's release back. Whether it be four months, six months, or, in this case, a year, you know something's rotten. Well, All The King's Men, finally seeing the light of day after a year on the shelf, is certainly rotten to the core.

Based on the Robert Penn Warren novel of the same name, the film follows the rise and eventual fall of 1950s Southern politician Willie Stark, a character loosely based on Governor Huey Long of Louisiana. Sean Penn plays the eccentric populist, and Jude Law hangs around as a conflicted advisor. We follow Stark's career from local politics to the Governor's office, watching as he employs blue-collar and us-vs.-the-wealthy rhetoric coupled with vows to clean up government corruption to secure votes.

However, once in office, Stark surrounds himself with less than savory characters and strong-arms political opponents with threats and blackmail. His inevitable fall stems from his unyielding paranoia and a backlash against his aggressive ways.

All that would be fine and good, if it was our sole focus. Instead we spend a good portion of the film with Jude Law, who must deal with his only conflicted politics. With roots in Southern aristocracy, he must reconcile his upbringing with Stark's everyman approach, balancing his family's social and political ties with Stark's aggressive anti-wealthy agenda.

Sound confusing? Well it should, All The King's Men is one mess of a movie. It can't decide who should be the main character, so instead we're ping-ponged back and forth between Penn and Law, neither of whose characters do we truly get to understand. Further complicating matters is a number of muddled political subplots which seem to have no cohesion whatsoever.

However, the biggest flaw here is that the film doesn't know what kind of story it's telling. It doesn't know what it has to say. Is this a cautionary tale? A character study? A rags-to-riches-to-rags story? A tragedy? A social commentary? It's like the filmmakers had no conviction and decided to throw a little of each in to see what sticks. Well, nothing did.

Also exacerbating matters is Steven Zaillian's overcooked, pretentious direction. Every moment of the film is made to feel extraordinarily weighty, an effort that goes wasted when the subject matter is so ridiculously misplayed.

A talented collection of supporting actors are here, however, James Gandolphini, Kate Winslet, and Mark Ruffalo, despite decent efforts, are wasted by the film's misguided bunglings.

All The King's Men suffers from a badly garbled and mis-wired screenplay along with an overdeveloped sense of importance. Couple that with a very over-the-top performance from Sean Penn (who flaps his arms so much in this film you'd think he'd take flight at some point), and you've got a laughingstock of a supposedly 'serious' film.