ALL THE KING'S MEN (DVD)

Director: Steven Zailian (A Civil Action, Searching for Bobby Fisher; screenwriter for Schlinder's List, many other major films)
Starring: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins

Like a house, a movie has a skeleton of structural pieces that have to be constructed correctly. Otherwise, no matter how pretty the gingerbread is on the outside, the whole building/film will come tumbling down. For All the King's Men, the builders forgot to nail in the "narrative" beam in the script. Without it, the whole film just tumbled in on itself, and it's now a pile of good looking bits and pieces, like an ugly demolition site that you hope somebody clears away when you drive by it.

This story is nearly nonsensical, it's so badly put together. It's a shame too, because each of the powerhouse cast of Penn, Law, Winslet and Hopkins were quite good in their own way. They just didn't make any sense when put together. Or rather the words that they were saying to each other didn't make much sense, no matter how well said by the actors.

The production was lavish, and at times beautiful. Moments of the story seemed interesting, or rather felt like they should have been interesting. I've heard quite a lot about how good the source book was. The screenplay was an utter failure, however. And it took everything down with it.

All the King's Men (sort of) tells a fictionalized account of Huey Long, the populist governor of Louisiana during the Great Depression. Here he's called Willie Stark, however, and Penn plays him as the loudest, most emotive rabble-rouser you could imagine. Penn always plays characters that scream in one way or another. I'd love to see if he could internalize his characters a bit, but whatever. It kind of works for this character.

Jude Law is an advisor to Willie Stark, embroiled in a (sort of) subplot with Hopkins (the man who raised him as a father figure) and Winslet (the love interest). It's not particularly clear how all of these plot points tie in with the main story about the Gov, but I may have already mentioned how not much ties together in this film. It all supposedly winds around political gamesmanship and finding the buried secrets in their pasts. It's all uninteresting, however. Every bit of it. At least when Penn starts yelling in his role it's more interesting. These characters quietly go about their roles, brooding. It's boring. So a note for Hollywood: If your script sucks, you should just film up the screen with loud things like explosions, and emoting, and whatnot. Oh, wait, I guess Hollywood figured this out years and years ago. Nevermind.

If you know the story of Huey Long, then you know he is assassinated in the capitol building he built. This should have been the big finale to this film, but there wasn't a thread of intrigue leading up to it. It just happened, and then the film was over. Not a good ending, to a not too good film. All the way through, this film has the feel that it could have been great. But like a beautiful mansion that's collapsed, it's still just a pile of rubble on the side of the road. Let's hope they clean it up.

Standouts: The actors were all relatively good, albeit with not much to work with in the script.
Blowouts: The director and screenwriters must be blamed for the mess that was the narrative.

Grade: C-