Product: All the King's Men [Blu-ray] (2007)
Rating: 3.0
I wanted to like this movie...
.. and despite the bad reviews, I went. The mainstream reviewers are right. Sean Penn is great, but one actor does not make a film.Some reviewers here praise the script, but I think the problems result from the script. The Burden character doesn't make sense. He begins as a cynical reporter. Why is he, of very upper crust New Orleana, traveling from small town to small town to write stories he says he doesn't care much about? His impulse to join Stark, if it's about boredom, fits, but this isn't clear. His descent from being aloof, to his questionable ethics is totally unexplained (or is it meant to be existential?). His romance and the fate of this, which mostly happens off screen, also seems to be random.Gandolfini looks good in the part, but the part is not well used. The Hopkins role has too much contrived eccentricity and how Burden arrives at his betrayal of him is unclear.I give it 3 stars for Penn (who deserves 5), and the attempt to tackle a complicated story.