All the King's Men
Sony Pictures Releasing | Release Date: September 22, 2006 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
37
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
20
Negative:
13
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Zaillian (an Oscar winner for his "Schindler's List" screenplay) has given us an intricate, subtly rewarding narrative whose uncompromising nature and undeniable moral seriousness make it far from business as usual, even in the ever-decreasing world of quality Hollywood filmmaking. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Schickel
You can, if you will, think of All the King's Men as a purely political parable, but that is to miss its blackest, bleakest meanings. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
We never see enough of the small compromises Willie Stark makes on the way up to fully grasp the tragedy of his fall. Some will undoubtedly find Penn's hamboned, spittle-lashing performance a bit much, but it's a pretty close to Warren's original conception. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Some performances carry a picture, this one bench-presses it. Sean Penn's work here is so mesmerizing, so intense, so guaranteed to put him front and centre when Oscar reads out the nominees, as to almost obscure the multiple failings of the misguided movie around it. Read full review
60
Washington PostStephen Hunter
All the King's Men hasn't been directed so much as over-directed, although the result, when you make an effort to filter out all the film school pyrotechnics, is an honorable run at Robert Penn Warren's classic novel. Read full review
60
EmpireStaff (Not credited)
A frustrating experience. It's beautifully shot, acted and designed, but there's little cohesion in the story. Maybe one day we'll see a better cut, but for now this is a sadly fumbled opportunity. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Those familiar with the novel will undoubtedly agree that reading it is a more satisfying experience than watching this disappointing film. One expects more - much more, in fact - with a cast of this caliber. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterKirk Honeycutt
Audience can certainly find entertainment in this movie, so long as no one takes things too seriously. One suspects, however, that Zaillian and a vast team of producers and executive producers that includes political consultant and pundit James Carville believe they are making a serious commentary on American politics. It comes closer to kitsch. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
As the corrupt, populist Louisiana governor Willie Stark, Crawford was such a swaggering behemoth that it would take Godzilla to upstage him. Sean Penn isn't quite that. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The new production is handsome and offers a few riveting moments, but it's basically a botched job that misses all the impact of both the original movie and the 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Robert Penn Warren that inspired it. Read full review
50
USA TodayClaudia Puig
You can't help but have high expectations from Zaillian and this stellar cast. But the result this time is a thuddingly tedious soap opera. Read full review
50
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
Failures on the scale of writer-director Steven Zaillian's All the King's Men are as rare as falling sequoias, and they make a noise even if no one's in the woods to hear them. This sequoia is very noisy indeed. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
I'm not the first observer, or even the second, to liken the star's (Penn) portrayal of fictional Louisiana governor Willie Stark to the late John Belushi's impersonation of Joe Cocker. Read full review
50
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
In essence, a wild soap opera disguised as a political allegory, it's a movie, with its over-the-map performances, that is worth catching only for the inadvertent laugh or two. Read full review
50
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The problem is that so little in this version of All the King's Men speaks to the here and now or even speaks clearly. It feels like a repertory exercise -- and not a very successful one at that. Read full review
50
Film ThreatPete Vonder Haar
Comes up short in many ways, but none more so than its failure to fulfill Penn's and Zaillian's desire to provide the catalyst for political sea change. Read full review
50
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
The film isn't dreadful: it is just generally disappointing. Read full review
42
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
Writer-director Steven Zaillian's version stultifies, especially when compared with Robert Rossen's fiery 1949 Oscar winner. How could such dullness defeat the retelling, when Willie Stark is one of the most vivid characters in 20th-century American popular culture? Read full review
42
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Everyone from the ensemble appears to be acting in a different picture. Zaillian strands them all. Read full review
40
VarietyTodd McCarthy
Overstuffed and fatally miscast, All the King's Men never comes to life. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
As Willie Stark, Sean Penn demonstrates how a great Method actor can make the world’s most unconvincing rabble-rouser. Read full review
40
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
Penn goes for larger-than-life, wrapping his pinched frown around an unintelligible Louisiana drawl and swinging his arms like an autistic evangelist... Law is no asset--looking rather sadly like John Ireland (the actor who played the 1949 Jack Burden), he has little control over his accent and zero energy. Read full review
40
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Penn gives a strenuous, at times shrewd and acid performance, which has been embedded, unfortunately, in a clumsy and ineffective movie. Read full review
40
NewsweekDavid Ansen
This stiff-in-the-joints movie has little feel for its setting or period, and crucial chunks seem to have been left on the cutting-room floor. Robert Rossen's Oscar-winning 1949 version has nothing to fear. Read full review
38
New York PostLou Lumenick
Lethally dull and self-important remake. Read full review
38
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Yet even the language, finally, becomes as inauthentic as the accents. Read full review
38
Rolling StonePeter Travers
Overthought, overwrought and thuddingly underwhelming, this high-profile misfire makes a congealed gumbo out of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winning 1946 novel and the Oscar-winning 1949 movie that followed it, sinking a classy cast in the goo. Read full review
33
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
The movie's more damnable problem is it irrelevance. Read full review
30
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
I'd take almost any colorful-character shtick over the gloomy gravitas that settles over All the King's Men early on and never leaves. Read full review
30
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Despite an A-list cast and director, it's astonishing how bad this movie is. Read full review
30
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Nothing in the picture works. It is both overwrought and tedious, its complicated narrative bogging down in lyrical voiceover, long flashbacks and endless expository conversations between people speaking radically incompatible accents. Read full review
30
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
The unfocused story is so bereft of any clear sense of period or location that the political melodrama sometimes seems to be taking place inside a cigar box. Read full review
25
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
Kathy Baker, as Burden's elegantly sodden mother, shows the only sign of interpretive life in this stiff-jointed enterprise. She has about five minutes on screen; she's lucky that way. Read full review
25
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
A handsome, sincere, well-meaning bore. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Recalling the earthiness Broderick Crawford brought to the original, I couldn't help thinking Gandolfini should have been cast as Willie. Read full review
20
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Both the performance and the movie around it are virtually incomprehensible. Read full review
10
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
What a botch. All the King's Men, a remake of Robert Rossen's classic 1949 film about the rise and fall of a Southern demagogue, has no center, no coherence, no soul and no shame.
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