Audiences won’t be hard-pressed to see what studio executives had in mind when signing up the cast and crew of All The King’s Men. First off, it’s a remake of an Academy Award-winning film, and written and directed by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Steve Zaillian. It stars two Academy Award winning actors, Sean Penn and Anthony Hopkins, as well as three nominees, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, and Patricia Clarkson. Even composer James Horner and cinematographer Pawel Edelman have golden statuettes sitting at home. So many people involved in the making of All the King’s Men have won Oscars that it might actually be quicker to list all the people who haven’t won one. Obviously, these studio execs must have their hearts set on winning an Independent Spirit Award, or a Golden Globe.
In fact, they seem so set on hauling home an Oscar that when a two-month editing delay pushed the film out of the 2005 award seasons (it was originally slated for release last December), the studio opted to shelve it for nearly a year, just so that the film would be in a prime position for the coming competition.
Overlooked amongst these grossly over-calculated plans was the fact that hiring a crew that seems lifted from a red carpet guestlist would guarentee that competing talents would overshadow the substance and integrity of what could have otherwise been a strong film.
Between the elite Hollywood cast clamouring over each other for screen time, Steve Zallian’s excessively metaphorical, yet banal screenplay, and James Horner’s ego-tripping score, it becomes obvious that at some point this film degenerated into one big “For Your Consideration” ad, which leaving behind any aspirations of solid filmmaking.
The film features Sean Penn as Willie Stark, a fictionalization of the radical, Robin Hood-inspired Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long, a democrat, who grappled for dictatorial control over social reforms and the redistribution of wealth within his state. A man of the people at the outset, Stark soon betrays his own ideals for the sake of achieving ends that will hopefully justify his drastic means.
The film is convoluted by multiple sub-plots, which could have worked had this film been a three hour epic. Instead, the all-star supporting cast is reduced to making feeble attempts at developing their characters, with only table scraps of screen time to work with.
All The King’s Men could have been a stirring political drama about greed and ambition gone awry. Instead the film itself suffers from these very same maladies. Good thing everyone involved already has an Oscar.
