I love this movie so much

Captivating movie !

Best movie of this year hands down!

Blistering performances.

I've never seen the original 1949 film, so the 2006 remake of All the King's Men is my only reference for the story. And while I watched the film in its entirety, if pressed, I wouldn't be able to give you a very detailed plot synopsis. To be blunt, it's pretty boring, and none of the characters motivate you to pay close attention.Sean Penn is an over-the-top Southern politician with dreams of grandeur. I've never found him to be very trustworthy in his roles anyway, so it's not a stretch to believe he manipulates and panders to his audiences and those in his close circle, while hiding his ulterior motives. In tow are journalist Jude Law, girlfriend Patricia Clarkson, and political crony James Gandolfini. James seemed to be on a constant verge of cracking up, Patricia seemed miscast, and Kate Winslet, who got on the promotional poster, has an infinitely smaller part than her counterparts. I don't know why she was cast either, since her role consisted of very little acting, except maybe she, her publicist, or the studio were drawn to cast her for one scene of partial nudity. The big scene in the film—Sean Penn is making a political speech and no one is listening to him, so he lays on the heavy religious rhetoric and shouts and gains everyone's attention and support—felt extremely forced and uncompelling. How can the audience get excited about Sean's big scene when it feels like it was the fortieth take and everyone was tired and knew what to expect? While James Horner's theme was supposed to sound ominous, all I heard were the similarities to Hans Zimmer's music in Green Card, which had an entirely different meaning. All the King's Men isn't a movie I wish I'd never seen, but it was very forgettable and hardly the money that went into it. A Face in the Crowd, a different story but with similar themes, is an infinitely superior film.DLM warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. In the first and last scenes, the camera spins in a continuous circle, and it might make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"

The 1949 version of this story may not have been a masterpiece, but it's certainly a better piece of film-making -- and much better acted -- than this disappointing, sloppy, and comparatively dull remake. Whether or not it's more or less faithful to the novel is besides the point -- this is a MOVIE and it should work as a movie. Penn borders on the grotesque, Law looks like he needs sleep, Clarkson will never win an Oscar for this as McCambridge did in the original because her role seems to have been left on the cutting room floor to make room for more Penn. Important scenes are just sloughed off in non-dramatic fashion so that it's almost like a parody at times. See the original!

Not a remake of the 1949 film, but a more faithful adaptation of Robert Warren Penn's iconic novel, Steve Zaillian's (Schindler's List, Searching For Bobby Fischer, The Interpreter) take tells the story of politician Willie Stark (Sean Penn). Set in 50s Louisiana, the film documents Stark's humble beginnings, rise to power as governor, and final downfall, from the perspective of journalist Jack Burden (Jude Law), who gets drawn into Stark's ever murkier world.Crucified by critics on release, I found this to be a very 'split' film. The good first: It's photographed and scored beautifully, and despite accents, the all-star cast are predictably effective, with Penn delivering the needed bombast and passion of the corrupted governor. Law is good too as a disillusioned journalist fighting his own demons, especially an old flame and her brother, played by Winslet and Ruffalo respectively, also solid. We even get Hopkins and the late Gandolfini in supporting roles as a powerful judge and Stark's first ally, though both don't get much to do and feel more like novelties.Now, its narrative is where things get really hazy: Drifting between political corruption with Stark, and Burden's own personal story of manipulation and loss, the shift is not handled very smoothly at all. The story seems meandering and unfocused most of the time, with Burden's tale taking a little more precedence over Stark's. Not only does this cut away from some great potential allegory and parallels with modern politics, but it feels like the shades of grey are where Zaillian should be most at home. In 'Schindler's List', he handled that extremely well, but here, once he gets into office, he pretty much right away becomes a two faced weasel, which regardless of accuracy to the novel, doesn't make for terribly dramatic or smooth screen storytelling.As for Burden's story in and of itself, it's okay, but again, it feels like its detracting from where the story should be focused on. Yes, there is some parallel between how both men let down people, and they are tied together because they factor into Stark's political schemes, but it just drags and, again, doesn't feel like that's where the heart of this story should be. What works in a book doesn't always translate to screen, and this type of sprawling, laid-back narrative feels better consumed over the course of chapters.In the end, the film isn't boring or lazy, and I don't think it's the abomination the critics branded it as, but it just feels like Zaillian is juggling too many things. Had he focused the story on Stark and really gone into examining the backstabbing nature of politics, we could've gotten something, while not incredibly original, much more effective and gripping. As it is, it just amounts to a whole bunch of 'okay', and nothing more.

As others have mentioned, the characters are miscast. Sean Penn fails miserably in this role. His gesticulating and god awful accent renders him incoherent through most of the movie. It makes me wonder why they didn't slap a wig on Gandolfini and have him play Willie Stark. Penn's mangled utterances of Willie Stark's dialog, direct from the novel, fails so miserably that by the end of the movie it's darned near painful to watch. Why didn't director Zaillian consider Patton Oswalt in the role of Stark? I know many of you are thinking whaaaa? But Oswalt could have excelled in this role and he looks the part. He could have brought equal parts drama (see "Big Fan") and comedy to the Stark character. And that's one thing the film suffered from is a lack of humor, which the novel has plenty of.As for Jude Law as Jack Burden? What the heck? Mark Ruffalo, a fine actor, should have got the lead (and Jack Burden is the lead character). Instead, we see Law sleepwalking through the film. Patricia Clarkson should have been Lucy Stark instead of Sadie Burke. And why was there only one scene with Lucy Stark in the movie? She's an integral aspect to the novel, yet Zaillian couldn't really fit her in at all. I believe Helena Bonham Carter could have provided the spunk and gravity for Sadie Burke.Zaillian cherry-picked the novel to adapt for the big screen. And this was a monumental feat because Robert Penn Warren's classic proves difficult to adapt. In 2hrs no one could possibly get to the meat of the novel. Lacking in the film is Burden's previous experience as a grad student studying history. History is elemental to the novel's main theme, which Zaillian butchered. It's almost as if the director didn't even read the novel or skipped over many, many fine portions.One of the most disappointing scenes is the film's opening. Penn Warren provided the classic hook in the first 40 pages of the novel that could easily have been adapted to film. Picture the tires of a black Cadillac cruising over the white lines of a black top highway, the roar of the engine, and just about the time you figure out what's happening, you see Sugar Boy's .38 nestled under his left armpit, followed by his stuttering of the word "B-b-b-b-bas-tud!" just about the time he weaves the caddy between two automobiles (the only spot on casting was for the role of Sugar Boy). From that point the film should have showed a Governor Stark arriving in his hometown, Mason City, as if it were the second coming of Christ. In Zaillian's re-telling of the tale, we get no sense of how popular the populist Stark is, but Penn Warren captured it beautifully in that first chapter. We also get a sense of how paranoid he is and how he's fighting to hold on to the political machine he has built. We get no sense of this in the movie...Zaillian instead misinterprets Stark as a second-rate dictator.Zaillian's time span is way, way off. His Stark dies in 1954, whereas the novel's dies in 1935. That's crucial to the rise of a populist--that Great Depression time frame. For this there is no forgiving Zaillian. Perhaps the movie producers had a hard time recreating the 1920s and 1930s South for the film and thus relied on a later time line, but that makes the film ahistorical because there's no discussion of World War II and it's legacy on the South--and how the Second World War invigorated the nascent black freedom struggle in addition to galvanizing white resistance. Any political leader South of DC had better hate blacks in this era or else there'd be no public office, and Zaillian's lack of basic U.S. history is evident in his retelling of this classic novel.More idiotic pieces of the film reveal how stupid the director was, i.e. the funeral for the three kids from "hick-town" indicates their Catholicism, yet in the novel there'd be few Catholic funerals. Only South Louisiana is Catholic. Fictional Mason City is in the heart of Protestant South. Moreover, only South Louisiana has graveyard tombs above ground, not the northern fictional town of Mason City.One scene rendered Zaillian's idiocy in his vision of the film--when Stark sings "Every Man A King" at the radio station. First of all, it's not in it's proper historical context, coming after World War II rather than the depression. Zaillian's retelling discounts the nascent Cold War when few politicos could have attained public office with a share-the-wealth kind of platform. Just look at what happened to Henry Wallace. In addition, Penn Warren's Stark is not Huey Long, but modeled after a Huey Long kind of figure, and the South had many of them, namely Theodore Bilbo in Mississippi, Eugene Talmadge in Georgia. Stark sang no "Every Man A King" in the novel, and so why does Zaillian include this in the film. Or, why on earth did Zaillian overtly set the film in Louisiana when the novel is ambiguous about it's setting, even calling Mason City the "county-seat" of Mason COUNTY (Louisiana has parishes).Zaillian's splicing together of certain scenes is mind-bogglingly bad. Aside from dreadful casting and shoddy organization, this film should have claimed a Razzy. The audience gets no sense of the stakes, of what Stark is up against, of why they hate him so much. Stark's admirers come off as impoverished dupes of a dictatorial madman played by Sean Penn. We don't even get an idea of how a Willie Stark could go from bumbling and idiotic country do-gooder to raving madman in six short years from Zaillian's retelling.Please, Hollywood, find a director who can make it a mini-series--which would be the only way it could be adapted with some coherence.