There are occassions when you look at the cast list, look at the crew and look at the source material for a film and are forced to ponder how so many promising elements turn into a turkey.
Based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that was to Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long what Primary Colors was to Bill Clinton, the film tells the story of a fiery, populist politician (Sean Penn) who takes on the oil industry.
We see the events from the perspective of Jack Burden (Jude Law), a newspaper writer who is drawn into Willie Stark's campaign for Governor and subsequently his administration.
Stark, who was based upon Governor Long, is urged to run by a political schemer named Tiny Duffy who is trying to use Stark to get his own candidate elected Governor. When Burden reveals to Stark that Tiny is using him, the politician responds with a verbal tirade at his next stump stop against the fat cats - a theme that resonates with the crowd.
Sean Penn's Stark is a curious beast that never really settles for me. I can admire the way he physically apes Long when giving speeches, most noticeable in the way he moves his hands as he talks, but his personality feels indistinct. It is almost as if he had decided that Stark is a morally ambigious character and so should be "grey". Not a mixture of motives, not a mixture of actions - just soft, "grey" ambiguity.
Now, I have nothing against ambiguity in and of itself in a character's motivations if we are presented with a character and asked to make judgements. However, Zaillian's script never lets us see Stark clearly, keeping him at ambigious middle-distance and shrowding the impeachment proceedings in mystery. In doing so it becomes ambigious as to whether those charges, whatever they are, are trumped up or based on evidence of some kind. We never know Stark so how can we judge him?
We also cannot share in Burden's disillusionment concerning Stark when we never get a feel for what attracts Burden to him in the first place. More ambiguity. Is it that he is drawn to the underdog? Does he respect Stark's resume? Does he want to undermine his newspaper's line on the election?
The principal problem with Burden is that he simply is not a likeable or empathic character. From the opening frame of this film he is cold and unhappy. We never really understand the hopes and aspirations of the character, or why he takes some very dramatic decisions. Clearly there is a reason he is drawn to Stark but by not letting us share Burden's journey, it is hard not to be baffled by one major decision the character takes.
Perhaps the film's broken narrative structure is also to blame. We do not follow the relationship between Burden and Stark as it happens but we begin near the end of the narrative. A more conventional chronological timeline may have been less flashy but it would have made the story and the characters more accessible.
The film attempts to guide us emotionally through its style but the music is too brash and the visual design tries far too hard to be eye-catching. Both the music and art design end up being counter-productive, being distracting rather than aiding the telling of the story.
For instance, in one scene the production suddenly switches from colour to black and white and when blood appears it is the sole colour on the screen. A nice effect certainly, but it is very reminiscent of a scene in Schindler's List (which Zaillian also scripted) and feels like it was only shot that way to show off the effect. Zaillian forgets that design should always be in service of the story, clumsily pulling the focus away from the actors and towards the direction.
All the King's Men is a disenaging and disappointing work that fails to make the most of its elements. Given its cast, which contains the likes of Anthony Hopkins and Kate Winslet, and the pedigree of its crew it is astonishing how this picture could end up falling so wide of the mark.
This is a film that never decides what it wants to say or why its messages, whatever they are meant to be, are relevant to today's audience. It is clear that the makers have a love of the original text, the excruciating voice-overs culled and stitched together from the novel are evidence of an admiration for Warren's poetic prose, but the film needed to go further to make a connection from the politicking of the mid-20th century to that of the start of the 21st century.
Zaillian himself recognises this problem, explaining that this was the reason he moved the setting of the story from 1930s Louisiana to the 1950s. Yet in terms of campaigning style there is little difference between the two.
The original novel's success was in its daring examination of the political machine at a time when we lacked cynicism. What could have been a biting satire with relevance to today's politics feels like a record of a bygone age and a missed opportunity.