"All the King's Men": royally lame

Fall has arrived, and with it, the onslaught of "serious" movies vying for that ultimate in film recognition: the Oscar. But one of the first and most promising-looking of this season's offerings, Steve Zaillian's "All the King's Men," is far from Oscar-worthy; with its convoluted storyline and disappointing cast, it's a royal mess.

The film is based on Robert Penn Warren's novel of the same name, which itself is loosely based on the life of Louisiana politician Huey Long. The story focuses on the transformation of an idealistic man into a power-hungry and utterly corrupt demagogue of a governor.

Willie Stark (Sean Penn) starts out as a small-time politician earnestly trying to change things for the poor, rural inhabitants of the bayou. As he ascends to the position of governor of Louisiana, however, he is soon faced with the fact that his lofty promises require a lot of money that won't come from just anywhere.

Like in the original novel, we see the action not through Stark's eyes, but from those of his right-hand man, journalist Jack Burden (Jude Law). The film remains relatively faithful to the book as it delves deep into Burden's privileged past, but the dual plotline does not translate well to the screen. Burden's story is inadequately explained and many of the secondary characters remain completely opaque. Burden's childhood friend Adam Stanton (Mark Ruffalo), in particular, is so unfamiliar to the audience (appearing in just a few short scenes), that his pivotal role in the climax is boggling and off-putting.

What is supposed to be a thought-provoking look at human morality ends up being an over-the-top and confusing muddle of a film with no apparent point. The film is doomed by its script, which reveals close to nothing about Stark's motives or internal crises. There is no slow decay of his morals; as soon as Stark lands in the governor's chair, he's cheating on his wife and making shady business deals at midnight.

Never is there a turning point for Stark, but instead what appears to be an enthusiastic leap into embezzlement and fraud. This gives the distinct impression that there is no gradual corruption involved, just a man who has been somewhat corrupt from the beginning. In this way, the film ensures that Stark's story (which has won not only an Academy Award in 1949 but also a Pulitzer Prize in 1947) evokes not an ounce of sympathy.

As a group, the actors fail to connect in one particularly embarrassing way: None of them can manage a Louisiana accent. Penn's is indecipherable (which makes for substantial confusion as to the direction of the plot), Law's comes and goes, and Anthony Hopkins, playing Burden's surrogate father, chooses not to affect one at all, leaving him puzzlingly British in the 1930s deep south. The only one who gets it right, sadly, is Patricia Clarkson, a New Orleans native, who plays Stark's cabinet member and mistress.

Penn is especially disappointing. His tour-de-force yelling and flailing, though they have done well for him in the past, here make him ridiculous to watch. He makes speech after speech (they're all rather similar, and there are far too many of them) while throwing his hands into the air and tilting wildly back and forth. His mannerisms suggest an attempt to channel the much more heavy-set Broderick Crawford, the original Willie Stark in the original 1949 film.

"All the King's Men" tries very hard to be powerful, but ultimately fails at anything other than self-importance. Truly, it would take all the king's horses and all the king's men to put this clunker together again.

"All the King's Men" (120 minutes, in area theaters) is rated PG-13 for an intense sequence of violence, sexual content and partial nudity.