All The King's Men (2006)

Steven Zaillian’s film was roundly dismissed in its homeland and generally compared unfavourably to the Oscar winning original film of the same name directed by Robert Rossen in 1949. Which is strange as Zaillian’s film is a much better in terms of production values, script and performances.  

In what is a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of real life Louisiana governor Huey Long, Sean Penn plays Willie Stark, who became governor of Louisiana in the early 1950s (the original film was historically accurate in being set during the Depression) in a landslide victory by promising voter-based reform. He does this but in a cavalier way, riding roughshod over his opponents and increasingly using his position for personal aggrandisement.  All this is seen through the eye of his right-hand man, former journalist and once Establishment scion, Jack Burden (Jude Law), who finds himself conflicted when Stark is impeached by Judge Irwin (Anthony Hopkins) Jack's godfather. Adding to his problems, Stark’s tries to sweep Jack's one true love  Anne Stanton (Kate Winslet), and her brother, Adam (Mark Ruffalo) into his manipulative orbit.

Writer/director Zaillian, who wrote Schindler’s List, fixes the biggest problem that the original film had, that of poor character motivation and development (although arguably it is still unclear why Jack hitches himself to Stark's wagon), by going back to the source material of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name and reducing the presence of some characters (such as Stark’s wife), re-writing others (notably that of Anne Stanton) to make a much more dramatically-satisfying film.

Where it strikes trouble however is the caricatural performance by Penn in the lead role.  Whereas Crawford, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his trouble, was well-suited to the role of a burly country hick who rose to the highest office in the state and even had eyes on the US Presidency, Penn is all arm-waving bluster and good ol' boy charm packaged with a painful Southern accent (only out-drawled by James Gandolfini) with little more than a haircut between his good-natured country boy beginnings and his City Hall swaggering.  

In itself, If I had to choose, I’d go with Zaillian’s well-crafted version over Rossen’s creakily schematic affair but take Crawford’s incarnation of Stark any day of the week.

 

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