By Ryan Parsons | Image property of Columbia Pictures.
All the King's Men
With Columbia Pictures sticking to the new release date of All the King's Men, the early reviews have begun to appear online. Now, I know what you are thinking. With a cast as impressive as the one featured in King's Men, you would have to assume a great film. Well assumptions only make an ass out of you and Penn.
All the King's Men Reviews
Early reviews have begun to appear online for All the King's Men and they aren't exactly pretty. Variety wasn't feeling it and THR concentrated more on Sean Penn's performance, which has been hailed as well done.
THR
This charismatic performance, surrounded by incisive turns by an all-star ensemble cast, gives furious energy to a movie that doesn't seem to know how to contain it. Writer-director Steven Zaillian's questionable solution is to fit this rambunctious portrait of unruly Southern politics in a monumental frame where Southern Gothic meets Leni Riefenstahl.
Audience can certainly find entertainment in this movie, so long as no one takes things too seriously.
Variety
Overstuffed and fatally miscast, All the King's Men never comes to life. Despite location shooting and obvious sincerity, this second screen version of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 novel about a corrupt populist Southern governor not unlike Louisiana's Huey P. Long doesn't seem authentic for a moment, due to a glittering array of actors who look and sound like they've come from different ends of the English-speaking world -- which, in fact, they have. Absent any point of engagement to become involved in the characters, the film feels stillborn and is unlikely to stir public excitement, even in an election year.
When Columbia Pictures pushed the film we took it as either a bad omen or an Oscar move. Judging by the latest, it was probably just a bad omen; which is too bad.
All the King's Men comes to theatres on September 22nd.
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