Oscar race season is in full effect and now is the time for the major Hollywood studios to release some of the most highly anticipated films of the year. One of the most anticipated is the feature debut of acclaimed screenwriter, Steve Zallian (“Gangs of New York,” “Mission Impossible”). Zallian directs an all star cast in the remake of the 1949 Oscar-winning classic, “All the King’s Men.” The film is based on the 1946 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Robert Penn Warren. Sean Penn stars in the lead role of Willie Stark, a common Southerner who rose to govern Louisiana through the power of people and corruption during The Depression era. The expectations were high with a cast that enlists such A-list names as Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins. As life goes, with such great expectations come disappointments, great disappointments. Not-so-stellar performances in combination with poor direction and editing made “All the King’s Men” one of the year’s greatest cinematic disappointments.
The role of Willie Stark is based on the element of transition and great character change. Beginning as a modest yet compassionate door-to-door salesman, Stark realizes the needs of the common people. His signature charismatic speeches to the common workers help to attain him the role of governor, but as he gains power his priorities and agenda begin to shift. Corruption and greed eventually lead to his downfall.
With a hard role to conquer, Penn’s performance as Stark shies in comparison to other cast members. His acting skills peek during the beginning speech scenes, in which Stark yells and jabs his fist in the air demanding the attention of almost every viewer. The overacting, most likely due to poor direction, becomes almost laughable near the end of the film.
Jude Law plays Stark’s adopted PR representative and narrator, Jack Burden. Burden is hounded by reporters questioning the ethics and corruption of the failing Louisiana governor. Law’s performance as Burden is forgettable and boring at times. His inability to transcend the hardship of representing one the most controversial governor’s of all time is where Law fails.
And the performances continue on the same forgettable trend with half-hearted attempts from Winslet and Hopkins. To make matters worse the so-called “Southern” accents are dreadful. Law and Hopkins have distracting British undertones, while Winslet sounds like she is from the Midwest.
With a cast of all previous Oscar winners and nominees you would wonder where this film went wrong. It’s not the script, but rather the direction. Zallian has a lot of good elements to work with including a great cast and script, but apparently didn’t know what to do with them. With so much to live up to, it seemed as though” All the King’s Men” was doomed from the start.