All The King's Men (15.)
Directed by Steven Zallian.
Starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ruffalo. 128 mins
It takes some kind of perverse genius given the current climate to make an uninteresting film about the American political system but in adapting Robert Warren Penn’s Pulitzer prize winning novel, writer/ director Zallian has somehow managed to produce a political period piece that has no contemporary relevance whatsoever. (OK, there is a line early on about the oil men running everything, but that really is it.)
All The King’s Men is a fictionalised version of the Huey Long story, the former door to door salesman who went onto become Governor of Louisiana in the 1920s and built up a fearsome political machine that might’ve taken him to the White House. The assumption when I heard that it was to be remade (Robert Rossen wrote and directed an Oscar winning version in 1949) was that it would be updated and given a contemporary setting. But no, Zallian has signed up for the whole works, a Deep South period piece full of folks in white suits leaning back on their porches, frantically fanning themselves while sipping Bourbon and drawling about the “coloureds.”
There was an internet rumour a few months back that Sean Penn was about to be cast as the Joker in the next Batman movie. It seemed like a fine joke at the time: the world’s most humourless actor cast as the Clown Prince of Crime but watching him barnstorm his way through the role of politician Willie Stark, all wide fixed grin and piggy eyed evil, it would’ve been perfect casting.
Penn is easily the best thing the movie has going for it but the process of his corruption, his conversion from teetotal man of conviction to boozy wheeler dealer is all done and dusted in the first half hour. After that Penn’s firecracker show gets sidelined for Jude Law, whose character has some lumbering family melodrama to work through. Read that sentence back and you’ll probably spot an obvious mistake.
I don’t often take a Thatcherite approach to film criticism but this movie is like an old nationalised industry, ludicrously overstaffed and full of overpaid talent being employed to do very little. It’s crying out for a burst of rationalisation. Top notch performers like Winslett, Ruffalo and Gandolfini turn up and are then given nothing to do. They stand around like characters in an Agatha Christie mystery who’ve all received the same anonymous message telling them to meet on a film set but once there are given no clue at to why they’ve been thus summoned or what they’re now supposed to do.
Directed by Steven Zallian.
Starring Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Anthony Hopkins, Mark Ruffalo. 128 mins
It takes some kind of perverse genius given the current climate to make an uninteresting film about the American political system but in adapting Robert Warren Penn’s Pulitzer prize winning novel, writer/ director Zallian has somehow managed to produce a political period piece that has no contemporary relevance whatsoever. (OK, there is a line early on about the oil men running everything, but that really is it.)
All The King’s Men is a fictionalised version of the Huey Long story, the former door to door salesman who went onto become Governor of Louisiana in the 1920s and built up a fearsome political machine that might’ve taken him to the White House. The assumption when I heard that it was to be remade (Robert Rossen wrote and directed an Oscar winning version in 1949) was that it would be updated and given a contemporary setting. But no, Zallian has signed up for the whole works, a Deep South period piece full of folks in white suits leaning back on their porches, frantically fanning themselves while sipping Bourbon and drawling about the “coloureds.”
There was an internet rumour a few months back that Sean Penn was about to be cast as the Joker in the next Batman movie. It seemed like a fine joke at the time: the world’s most humourless actor cast as the Clown Prince of Crime but watching him barnstorm his way through the role of politician Willie Stark, all wide fixed grin and piggy eyed evil, it would’ve been perfect casting.
Penn is easily the best thing the movie has going for it but the process of his corruption, his conversion from teetotal man of conviction to boozy wheeler dealer is all done and dusted in the first half hour. After that Penn’s firecracker show gets sidelined for Jude Law, whose character has some lumbering family melodrama to work through. Read that sentence back and you’ll probably spot an obvious mistake.
I don’t often take a Thatcherite approach to film criticism but this movie is like an old nationalised industry, ludicrously overstaffed and full of overpaid talent being employed to do very little. It’s crying out for a burst of rationalisation. Top notch performers like Winslett, Ruffalo and Gandolfini turn up and are then given nothing to do. They stand around like characters in an Agatha Christie mystery who’ve all received the same anonymous message telling them to meet on a film set but once there are given no clue at to why they’ve been thus summoned or what they’re now supposed to do.
