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Tuesday, 10 October 2006 15:18 |
| | Meg Hale |
It is generally considered in poor taste to remake a film that has already been produced to its full potential.
The new film "All the Kingës Men" is a remake of what is considered a classic 1949 film of the same name that happened to have won the Academy Award that year for Best Picture.
Moreover, it is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Robert Penn Warren, the first poet laureate of the United States. With all of this going for it, the remake has to be good, but it seems somewhat of a cop-out to remake a film that is almost entirely risk-free.
To
top it all off, nearly everyone who is in this movie has been nominated
for an Oscar in the past 10 years, including Kate Winslet ("Titanic")
and Patricia Clarkson ("Good Night, and Good Luck"). As does most films
that seem to be driving as hard as possible toward Oscar-dom, the film
stars Jude Law ("The Talented Mr. Ripley") as its narrator,
newspaperman Jack Burden. I think Law is a wonderful actor, but this is
definitely not a role that shows off his abilities. If Iëm honest with
myself, nor is any other film heës made in the last five years.
In "All the
Kingës Men," the action of the movie stops any time Law is onscreen.
His lack of character and dreadful Southern accent drag the film down a
great deal. If he couldnët get out of his British dialect, he should
have just stuck with it. Anthony Hopkins, who plays former Judge Irwin,
did all of his lines in his standard dialect and no one questioned it.
Whatës more,
Lawës scenes were usually opposite Sean Penn ("Mystic River"), who did
a phenomenal job at playing the character of Governor Willie Stark and
only made Law look bad.
The movie is the
story of the rise and fall of Willie Stark, a populist Louisiana
governor, who bases his campaign on rejecting the corrupt and wealthy
powers that be, and fighting for the "hicks." Naturally, once he gains
power, Stark finds that corruption is often what keeps politicians
afloat.
The character of
Stark is loosely based on former Louisiana Gov. Huey Long. Long was
known for being a highly dynamic and charismatic speaker. He began the
Share Our Wealth program in 1934, a kind of Robin Hood notion to tax
large corporations and redistribute the fund to help fight the poverty
created by the Great Depression. The motto of this movement was "Every
Man a King," which Long wrote a song about that Penn sings in the film.
Though the movie
is grossly historically inaccurate, it is interesting and beautifully
directed by Steven Zailian ("A Civil Action").
In political
films, one rarely sees such dramatic artistic choices on the part of
the director. Being the writer of the screenplay as well, Zailian made
most of the choices having to do with the order of flashbacks, symbolic
shots and dialogue. These are the aspects of the film that impressed me
the most. They were much needed to make the running time of the film
pass.
In fact, that is
my biggest criticism of the film: runtime. "All the Kingës Men" runs
nearly two and a half hours. There are stories that contain so much
information, or that are exciting enough to hold an audienceës
attention for more than two hours. The story behind this film is not
one of them.
Parts of the
movie are so slow that I found myself mentally taking note of what
scenes could have been edited, and which could have been removed
altogether.
Other than being
downright dragging throughout a decent portion of the film, it is a
very good movie. Most of the performances are good and the story is
fascinating, as well as containing an appropriate message for todayës
political-minded society.
I have not seen
the original, so I donët know how it compares to the newer version, but
it was certainly worth a watch. I give "All the Kingës Men" four of my
six planets.
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