Review: All the King’s Men

UK Release: 27th October 2006

In his role as wily politician Willie Stark, Sean Penn does a lot of shouting and grand gesticulating, but fails to bring this remake of the 1949 Oscar-winning drama to life. Writer/director Steven Zaillian seems overawed by the task of adapting Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which shows Stark (a character inspired by real-life Louisiana governor Huey P Long) gradually being seduced away from his populist ideals by the lure of power.

Jude Law plays Stark’s right-hand man Jack Burden, who tries to avert scandal while battling his own inner demons. Unfortunately, Zaillian’s script becomes so tangled up in numerous subplots — Burden’s relationship with an old flame (Kate Winslet), to name but one — that supposedly significant revelations have little impact, and so Zaillian is forced to rely on endless talky scenes and a ponderous voiceover to explain the story. And the performances of the undeniably A-list cast, which also includes Anthony Hopkins, seem affected thanks to the ostentatious direction.

Radio Times rating:

**

UK cinema certificate 12
Running time 127mins

Review by Stella Papamichael

News: Steven Zaillian

Though he doesn’t have any more directing projects lined up, the writer/helmer of this week’s political remake All the King’s Men has provided the screenplay for Sir Ridley Scott’s next project after this week’s other big release, A Good Year. A 1970s-set period piece, American Gangster will see Scott’s current favourite leading man, Russell Crowe, starring alongside Denzel Washington as a detective trying to prevent a drug lord from importing heroin into Harlem in the coffins of soldiers killed in Vietnam.