Sometime this afternoon, over at Spot-on I will post a few thoughts on All the King's Men, both the novel and the recent film adaptation.I'm pretty rough on the film, but I always write and talk about movies--even awful ones--with a huge implied proviso: "Given that it's so hard to get a picture made, I sincerely salute the people who made this movie and got it shown on the big screen."
And I have much more respect for writer-director Steven Zallian's All the King's Men than I may have communicated in the Spot-on essay or which is covered by my generic implied proviso. The new adaptation feels like one of those projects that might have been, but for a handful of medium-sized changes, one of the great films of the year.
In fact, I speculate that part of the problem with Zallian's story may be an echo of the way Robert Penn Warren constructed the novel, adding a major character and story device well after he had conceived of the main story.
Click over to Spot-on this afternoon to see what I'm talking about.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
