All the King’s Men

This is one of the most realistic portrayals of politics I believe I have ever seen. Sean Penn stars as a populist politician who goes at the corrupt Louisiana state elite, and once elected state governor turns out to be ruthless in his pursuit of his idealist agenda.

Perhaps too ruthless. Jude Law is cast as the main supporting character, through whose prespective we’re presented with the movie’s events. Hailing from an old aristocratic family, he finds himself drawn to the as yet unelected but honest Penn, only to discover that Penn isn’t as honest as he at first thought. At first he is able to go with the flow; after all, Penn’s honesty still extends to his political programme, if no longer to his private life or political methods. However, when the politician clashes with Law’s father figure, an influential and conservative Lousiana judge, Law’s character arrives in something of a fix, around which the main parts of the plot revolves.

In between all this soap, for which the movie has been heavily criticised (too heavily, in my opinion), there are first rate dramatic performances. Particularly by Penn, whose radical rabble rouser holds some almost Hitler-esque public speeches. However, unlike Hitler, of whose rhetorical style most people today laugh at, Penn’s character manages to capture you, and his violent arm-waving hardly comes off as comical at all. Law also does a solid job, as he’s always done well with sophisticated but pensieve characters. As such, he makes for a stark and solemn contrast to Penn’s more energetic part. The rest of the cast is so star-specked you’d be excused for thinking it was the Stars and Stripes, but unfortunately none of the other characters are allowed enough room to develop. You get a sense of them, which is solid enough, but it’s not necessarily enough to make you cultivate any particular feelings for any of them.

As far as I can tell, the first adaptation of the novel on which this movie is based, handled the subject matter a bit differently than this one. In that first one Stark, Penn’s character, was apparently portrayed as a more dramatically corrupt politician. Penn’s Stark, on the other hand, looked more frustrated and unscrupulous than corrupt in the meaning “accepts bribes” or “serves special interests”. The source of his frustrations was easy to discern, as he was trying to pass progressive legislation in a state dominated by self-serving politicians in the pockets of oil companies. As for his lack of scruples, that character trait seemed to be stemming at least in part from his lack of other methods to obtain the support of the state legislature. However, it was difficult to tell; the movie’s basic story is organised into an almost literary plot, with some leaps back and forth that makes it somewhat difficult to trace the character development precisely. Additionally, some five years worth of story, plus a rough decade or so of backstory, is crammed into two hours of plot, with a vague sense of passing time, further disrupting attempts to keep track of the chronology.

In any event, All the King’s Men is a solid and ambitious attempt to explore the constraints of social structures even on the most powerful of individuals. It has good characterisations, if just short of enough; an intriguing plot; and enough behind the scenes politics to make any political junkie drool. Add to this atmospheric scenery and all the trappings of a good period piece, and you’ve got yourself a very good movie.

8.5 out of 10.