Product: All the King's Men [Blu-ray] (2007)
Rating: 5.0
An all-too-real mirror held up to American politics
This is a tragically underrated film; the one significant deficiency is the changing time frame, advancing the narrative twenty years past Hughie Long's era and into the period of McCarthyism. To fully appreciate this movie, the viewer might first read R. Penn Warren's pulitizer prize novel. Warren always struggled with plot lines--and perhaps this version ties all the stray threads together a little too neatly. The point, however, is that all the plot changes work both dramatically and thematically--they're not gratuitous. A first class production with an amazing cameo by one of our greatest unknown actors Frederick Forrest as Willie's father. Those who think Penn is overacting here need to go back and see film clips of the verbose southern powerhouse governor in action; Penn nailed it. Watch the film a second time to see how he builds and builds--one of his best performances. If ever America needed this movie, it's now.