All The King's Men

Steven Zaillian’s version of All the King’s Men is a tedious exercise in fabricated prestige. The film’s dialogue sounds full of classically written quotable phrases, but almost none of them seem to actually mean anything. Maybe they provided some insight in the original novel where there was an opportunity for closer inspection, but here they simply dangle in the air like charmless decorations. They’re just pretty words in a pretty film that’s so overdone that not a single moment appears to be an earnest piece of storytelling. The characters feel like soulless talking heads whose unspecified motivations and bad southern accents victimize the audience as it endures a ridiculous 141 minutes worth of stuffy, self-righteous gibberish of which only about 30 minutes manages to not be completely boring.

Though the film assembled an award winning cast, almost none of them seem right for their parts. Sean Penn’s much hyped performance approximates the demeanor of a manic politico, but I honestly did not care or feel for such a shallow, finger waving man. It sadly falls into the category of flat out caricature in which everything looks and sounds as it should, but no depth exists to make it sincere.

Such is the case with this entire film. It walks and talks like an Oscarworthy epic, but it has none of emotional richness that makes those films great works of art.

Grade: D