Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another review! Holy God they're coming out of the woodwork this weekend! This one's for the Sean Penn/Jude Law flick ALL THE KING'S MEN. Despite the teaser or "Sean Penn Yelling A Lot" trailer, I'm looking forward to this movie and the below review gives me good cause. Enjoy!

Harry,

Saw "All The King's Men" the other night with a quick panel discussion afterward with writer/director Steve Zaillian and his producing partner.

I'm not a professional reviewer but I am a filmmaker so take my review with a big fat snobby grain of salt:

First, the good: Sean Penn. What can you say? I keep waiting for him to make a misstep or take on too much, but every time he blows me away.

Despite Penn's first billing, however, Jude Law is the real center of the story. Penn's character is on a rail -- you have him pretty figured out from the get-go. But it's Law who has the tough decisions to make; it's Law who's character could go either way; it's Law who appears in almost every scene; and it's Law who does the voice over (of which there is LOTS). And he does a good job, although it's hard stay out of Penn's shadow when he's playing such a flamboyant character.

The pic is BEAUTIFUL to look at, with exceptional cinematography. They used the DP who did The Pianist -- and "King's" has that same washed out look. Zaillian said they briefly considered shooting the film in B&W but decided against it. I guess desaturating the hell out of the image was the next best thing. Looks great. Also, stunning art direction from an industry veteran production designer who did one of my all-time favorites: Amadeus.

The drawbacks: very convoluted story, which I guess is a pitfall anytime you do a book adaptation. This has been referred to as a "remake," but in fact it really isn't, at least not in the traditional sense. The book took place, I believe, during the 30's. But the original film from 1949 took place in what was then modern times. So the original film moved the setting from the 1930's to the 1940's. This time around, they're staying more true to the book and setting it in its original time period.

But I digress -- the story doesn't really have a strong arc. You slowly "kind of sort of" pick up on what it's all about as you go along. The story lines kind of surface and then disappear, and some characters feel half drawn. If I had to pick a word, I'd call it "murky."

I also found the southern accents a bit distracting at the beginning -- not because they weren't well done, but right off the bat, in the first scene, I know that Jude Law is British; a few scenes later Tony Soprano is talking like a southern hick, and at times a lot of it was just plain hard to understand, especially Penn. But after 15 minutes or so I stopped noticing.

So in the end, I don't see a best picture nod in its future, but I definitely see AT LEAST one best actor nod, along with well-deserved accolades for the cinematography and art direction. Worth the price of admission? Maybe not at Los Angeles ticket prices (why is it that a town that supports the movie industry charges its citizens the most for tickets?) but everywhere else, sure!

Also, there was some negative buzz when the release date was delayed. According to Zaillian, this was due to the fact that the start of production was delayed 3 months, but the studio tried to stick with the original release date. So they lost 3 months of post production and they just couldn't make it work. I think that should put to rest any concerns that it was delayed due to problems, re-shoots, etc.

And they're doing the premiere in New Orleans (the film was shot in Louisiana and wrapped up just 4 months before Katrina hit) and they're making a big donation to some organizations down there helping rebuild. They had a lot of nice things to say about the area and its people and wanted to do something to pay them back for the hospitality.

Call me Tired Eagle.