September 21, 2006

He also plays an actor with an at-times incomprehensibly over the top Louisiana accent. In a contest between Nuanced Portrayal of a Complex Man and Ah Gaaah-ron-tee Hamminess, guess which half of Penn?s Oscar-seeking-Jeckel-meets-Cajun-seasoned-Hyde performance won?

To Penn?s credit, his come-again-please speech patterns weren?t the movie?s worst. Plenty of actors went too thick on the accents and too light on subtlety. Perhaps they were following the lead of the screenplay, which went heavy on melodrama and light on the sort of political insights the movie clearly wants to make.

Willie Stark (Penn) is a soda pop-drinking, wife-adoring country treasure who finds himself on the outs with the powers that be in his town after he attempts to tell the populace about graft involved with the building of a local school. The populace isn?t interested until the school?s shoddy construction leads to a collapse and the death of some students. Riding that he-stands-for-the-little-man wave and pushed by political operatives (James Gandolfini, Patricia Clarkson) from the city, Willie decides to make a run for Louisiana governor.

Willie throws his whole heart into the bid but, as newspaperman and member of the state?s aristocratic class Jack Burden (Jude Law) realizes, the bid is really just a scam. The powers are really just trying to split the hick vote to ensure the victory of a candidate backed by the oil companies.

Jack, something of an earnest guy beneath his jaded pose, eventually lets Willie in on the trickery, which leads to a conversion in the politician. Where Willie used to show crowds pie charts and talk about allocation of funds, he now breaths fire and turns his demand for better public services (roads, schools, hospitals) into an urban vs. rural, rich vs. poor, class battle. He wins, but then the fight with the establishment truly begins to heat up.

Jack, formerly an observer, takes a job with Willie but finds himself not just crafting message but also digging up dirt on Willie?s political opponents, including Judge Irwin (Anthony Hopkins), a man who was a father figure to Jack growing up. As Willie?s need for political capital expands, Jack is forced to bring in another family of childhood friends, brother and sister Adam (Mark Ruffalo) and Anne (Kate Winslet). Adam was Jack?s best friend; Anne was his childhood sweetheart. As he sees Willie become ever more the kind of man he once railed against (complete with drinking and a series of girlfriends in addition to his steady mistress), Jack must battle with his own conscience over what he?s willing to do for Willie.

You can tell that this movie went mushy at some point in its creation from its trailers. The trailers focus on the Huey Long characteristics of Willie and then make a strange collage of the other characters. But in the movie, it?s the fumbling crowd of fading aristocrats and heartsick nambie-pambies that are Jack?s friends and family who hold center stage, not Willie and his goings-on. And if the trailer doesn?t let you know how much the marketing campaign tried to cover for the sloppy work of the film, the year All the King?s Men spent on the shelf verifies it.

Now, true, the book also puts narrator Jack Burden in the thick of the story. But the film goes too deep into his romantic disappointments, his family relationships and his weird, Tennessee-Williams-character-like fixation with Winslet?s Anne. Short of a few speeches ? backed by lighting and score that are far more dramatic than the words themselves ? we seldom see Willie as his career and his moral troubles progress. And his absence is notable. We are no longer watching the king and his men or just even the king?s men themselves. We are watching the king?s man wrestle with his personal failures. It?s like a film about the 1919 World Series that spends most of its time on the heartsick water boy.

What?s worst about All the King?s Men is what?s worst about watching a idealistic politician turn into another fat cat: so much potential wasted. C-

? Amy Diaz

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