All The Way (2016)

After the briefest of moments with this new president and his wife, the realization sets in: We are already profoundly and inescapably in the grip of two extraordinary performances--the kind that seem so little like performances it’s necessary to remember from time to time that these are what they are.

Jay Roach‘s smart direction and the brilliant script by Robert Schenkkan (adapted from his Tony-winning play) are essential to capturing the dynamics of an era and its principal players. Likewise, Bill Corso’s impressive make-up is indispensable to getting these historical characterizations just right. But the acting’s the thing, and there’s not a disappointing performance in this stellar ensemble cast.

This is a riveting film with a bravura performance by Cranston, who’s been the signature television actor of the past decade.

Bryan Dykstra was excellent as LBJ in the Rep’s solid production, but the movie, directed by Jay Roach, is almost a different animal, both intimate and broad, giddily exuberant and deeply dark. A bonus: On film, we hear every witty and/or disturbing line.

All the Way is packed with superb performances in addition to Cranston’s. Mackie delivers an Emmy-worthy performance as King. ... The script is nearly perfect in its nuanced attention to the complexities of Johnson’s character.

All the Way gets a couple of electrifying performances that catalyze the drama--not to mention the forward momentum of history. They’re brief, but they do the job. ... Magnificent, often stirring performance by Cranston that no one else comes close to matching.

The film brings the crude, demanding LBJ into focus along with the insecure, desperately needy man in one indelible performance. It's a beautifully rounded portrait of a complicated man at a crucial point in history, pushing for an important victory while tiptoeing toward the future that was Vietnam.

While there’s a lot to like in Schenkkan's smart script, All the Way is really a vehicle for Cranston, and he delivers in ways that make it much easier to forget “Trumbo.”

All the Way should be admired for going the distance, and Cranston rewarded for holding it all together.

Cranston delivers a titanic fill-the-screen turn, capturing the man’s bombast and sincerity in equal measure. In the process, he dwarfs his castmates.... Though it presents a captivating look at the nuts and bolts of high-stakes politicking, it suffers in such inevitable comparisons, in part because Roach’s direction is so stifling that the film feels small at the very moments it should be grand.

Cranston carries the movie past its occasional biopic clichés and leaves you feeling appropriately ambivalent about Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Held together almost entirely by Cranston’s performance, All the Way seems at times intentionally counter-intuitive; so much of the story’s advancement depends on deals that no one feels really great about that it’s hard to find the kind of catharsis many expect from these sorts of films.

Mr. Cranston keeps it watchable with a performance that grows ever more fervent but never goes over the top.

Once the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passes, and Johnson’s political strategizing is over, All the Way loses some momentum. But Cranston’s performance remains engaging throughout, as Johnson fights his way out of Kennedy’s shadow and into his own presidential light.

All the Way shows so much of the backroom dealings, influence-peddling and strategic threats that typified Johnson's approach that it can be a bit plodding and talky. ... Fortunately, the events are so momentous, and the cast so outstanding, they keep the stakes high.

All the Way works because Cranston is so determined to make Johnson relatable. He shows there’s more to the guy than baling wire and spit. Best of all, he isn’t afraid to let him look weak and afraid.

Schenkkhan abridges his teleplay to two hours and 15 minutes when this project might have been better served by going in the other direction, by making, say, a two-night, four-hour mini­series. ... There’s no comparing [Cranston's] performance to anything he’s ever done. All the Way is going to lead Cranston along a familiar path--right up to the Emmy podium come fall.

All the Way, at times, feels overstuffed, but you remain riveted while watching Cranston delve into the many layers of Johnson's personality, from folksy warmth to ruthless rage to the nagging insecurity over being considered an "accidental president."

The storytelling juggles too many elements--the civil war movement, escalation in Vietnam, LBJ's relationship with his wife (Melissa Leo). Still, in Cranston you should trust. He mesmerizes even with a shaggy narrative. [20 May 2016, p.52]

A robust adaptation of Robert Schenkkan's Tony-winning docudrama. [9-22 May 2016, p.19]

Cranston makes a meal of every scene he’s in, ticking off Johnson’s well-storied, outsized eccentricities with performer’s glee. ... The film’s 134-minute running time proceeds in fits and starts.

As was the case with the similarly middling “Confirmation,” here, a host of male character actors get a reasonable amount of screen time, but few make a lasting impression. That’s partly due to the nature of the film’s dialogue, which is often predictable and packed with dutiful exposition.

The film's first hour focuses on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and despite sometimes embellishing and distorting the actual events for no particular reason, it's a fast-moving portrait of legislative brinkmanship, political pragmatism and altruistic ambition. ... In its second hour, though, All the Way becomes an underexamined Wikipedia entry.

The film version of Cranston's LBJ only comes to life when he's listening to other characters or silently brooding to himself (while voice-over narration articulates his fears and doubts); otherwise he's a Madam Tussaud's waxworks LBJ that can move and speak, a testament to latex craftsmanship and the careful study of newsreels. The bigger his LBJ is in this film, the less credible and interesting he is.

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of epically failed moments as well, almost all of them related to Schenkkan’s script, which paradoxically tries to cover too much while delivering too little. Instead of focusing exclusively on the battle over the civil rights bill, he tries to fold in the entire year of 1964, which included everything from the Gulf of Tonkin naval incident that launched full-scale American intervention in Vietnam to the arrest of a key Johnson aide caught performing a homosexual act in a public restroom weeks before the election that threatened (or so the president feared, anyway) to destroy his campaign.