Review of All the King's Men (1949) by Grzegorz S — 18 Jul 2010

In 1992, critics savaged Hoffa (Danny DeVito's ambitious bio-pic of the infamous teamster leader) as being "over directed," a term never fully understood by this particular critic. With its heavy-handed script, terribly miscast stars, and over-powering score, All the King's Men gave this once ambiguous criticism sudden meaning. As David Lean made clear with The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia-two films brilliantly balancing quality writing, acting, and directing at a grand length-great epics are born, not made. Notice the word "quality." All the King's Men wants so bad to be an epic that it forsakes this for quantity.

In this R-rated remake of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, an honest everyman (Penn) rises through the rank and file of Louisiana politics only to become undone by corruption once he reaches the top, all under the watch of an eagle-eye reporter (Law).

From casting big-name talent over the best possible actor for the role to director Steven Zallian's dubious, grand-scale, melodramatic alterations to the hallowed text, every aspect of All the King's Men proves to be a lesson in the dangers of over-indulgence. Penn's inspired performance notwithstanding, everybody else simply showed up to cash a generous paycheck, their native-born accents intact. Apparently, the producers were so taken with Leslie Howard's weak-kneed Englishman-in-Dixie Gone with the Wind performance that they hired Law to pull off the same...and he does. Worst of all, Zallian accuses the audience of stupidity. What else would explain the use of such blatant visuals (the Louisiana crest filling with blood at the end) to hammer home Warren's moral?

Bottom line: All the king's horseshit.