Review of All the King's Men (2006) by Dawdlingpoet — 26 Nov 2021

While some scenes are relatively emotional and stirring (think public speeches and the like), others are much more subtle and quiet, thus I found it a bit hard to decide on one genre to categorise this under but I suppose its mainly a political drama, only the main characters are very much members of the local community and aren't living in fancy houses with security or anything like that. I think it'd be relatively fair to say that while its a drama, its not especially overly dramatic, for the most part. Themes covered include betrayal, the pursuit of power and corruption.

The film is very much dialogue heavy, as I'd call it and the characters all have relatively heavy (to my ears certainly) southern American accents, which may or may not bother you, as a viewer. I reckon I understood the majority of what was said, although it does help to concentrate on it a fair bit to fully follow the plot (I hope this isn't taken in a derrogatory way as I honestly don't mean it like that - no doubt most Americans would be a bit baffled by some of my Scots slang talk but I know that some people can have issues with following strong, thick foreign accents).

It had a good use of orchestral music from time to time, which helped to make the relevant scenes seem muh more spooky and sinister than they presumably would have appeared otherwise. A fair amount of scenes are set at night, so their automatically quite creepy in tone and the music adds well to this. This film features quite an impressive cast, including Sean Penn in the leading role as Willie Stark. He comes across as quite wise, or so he certainly believes himself to be anyway, a fairly pessimistic character but someone with an urge to change things, despite his incapabilities, of which there are a few. He appears quite cocky and self assured, although others may not always agree. Other cast members include Jude Law as Jack Burden, Kate Winslet as Anne Stanton, Mark Ruffalo and Adam Stanton, the late James Gandolfini as Tiny Duffy and Anthony Hopkins as Judge Irwin (as an aside, I can't say I ever thought I'd see a Welsh man playing a Southern American judge but hey, why not?). I'm relatively keen on Jude Law as an actor and him and Sean Penn seemed to do quite well in their roles, although im unsure if anyone else could be regarded as giving especially remarkable performances, certainly when you bare their other (previous) work in mind. Sean Penns performance was the most memorable overall I reckon, although he's played similar roles in other films I believe.

Content wise, this film features brief partial nudity (nothing graphic or extreme - a couple of dancers showing cleavage and that sort of thing on ocassion), there is some moderate violence, a few instances of racially offensive language used and some mild profanities and otherwise, all I can think to mention is that a few characters are shown smoking and drinking, which some parents may not like their younger children to see. The film carries a 12 rating to reflect this.

I felt that the film was interesting, in painting a picture of what the culture was like (in terms of racism and other local issues) in the 'deep South' in America at the time its set (its based on a 1946 award winning novel) - its mildly thought provoking and the characters interested me enough to keep watching it but I wouldn't say it was especially memorable or featured anything that would make me keen to watch it again or anything like that. Its a fairly decent film - the speeches are spoken pretty convincingly by Penn, so I thought but it is a bit slow, in terms of the general plot and there isn't a great deal of action - chases/explosions or anything like that, so if thats what your into then I'd look elsewhere. It wasn't one of the more dull films I've ever seen but it wasn't brilliant either, so I'll hesitatingly opt for the 4 star rating option, on the basis that it was quite watchable and mildly thought provoking, with good use of music but it won't be to everyones tastes. It is also both rather dour and idealistic at certain points.

Personally I enjoyed it but I realise it won't appeal to everyone. If your not keen on dialogue heavy films which have little in the way of visual effects and a slow(ish) plot then this will likely bore you, so it wouldn't be worth seeing but I felt it was an interesting story overall, it was relatively thought provoking, it did well at portraying the culture/society in the area at the time its set in (the 1950s) and it features a decent cast.