All the King's Men

In his role as wily politician Willie Stark, Sean Penn does a lot of shouting and grand gesticulating, but fails to bring this remake of the 1949 Oscar-winning drama to life. Writer/director Steven Zaillian seems overawed by the task of adapting Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which shows Stark (a character inspired by real-life Louisiana governor Huey P Long) gradually being seduced away from his populist ideals by the lure of power. Jude Law plays Stark's right-hand man Jack Burden, who tries to avert scandal while battling his own inner demons. Unfortunately, Zaillian's script becomes so tangled up in numerous subplots - Burden's relationship with an old flame (Kate Winslet), to name but one - that supposedly significant revelations have little impact, and so Zaillian is forced to rely on endless talky scenes and a ponderous voiceover to explain the story. And the performances of the undeniably A-list cast, which also includes Kate Winslet and Anthony Hopkins, seem affected thanks to the ostentatious direction.