Les fous du roi

As a straight drama the movie tends to drag at times but considered as a thinly veiled account of the rise and fall of Louisianna governor Huey Long it becomes a riveting period piece. To see the similarities in the fictional and actual stories please check Wikipedia under "Huey Long", part of which states the following...

One of (Huey Long's) famous speeches was, "Your will is my strength and your need is my justice. They want to ruin me so they can ruin you, and I won't let them!" This quote was used verbatim in the movie.

Sean Penn dominates every scene in which he appears - a fantastic performance.

I saw this film at the New Orleans premiere and found it to be an interesting spectacle that I largely enjoyed watching. I'm writing to let the public know that the numbers look strange at this point (September 17, 2006). Why? Nearly 20% of the votes have been in the 1-3 range (which would rate this film to be in the ranks of the worst low budget films ever made). One voter has commented that he did not see the film, but hates Sean Penn's politics so he won't see it and will give the film a 1 just to spite Penn. At the same time, nearly half of the votes give the film a perfect 10. I don't think that the polarized ratings to date reflect careful attempts to rate the film. Perhaps that's often the case with IMDb. I suggest taking them with a grain of salt for the time being and deciding for yourself if you are interested in the film.

I loved the book and have taught it every year to my AP students. We've been excited to see the film and have had big hopes for it. I find the 1949 film nearly impossible to watch, because they made so many changes to really critical parts of the book.

I think this movie will be a great addition to my DVD collection to help establish setting and so on for future AP English classes.

The script keeps lots of the dialogue, images, and the looping storytelling from the text I understand the compressions they needed to do--and they generally worked.

The acting was powerful: lots of nuances from Jude Law, Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Anthony Hopkins, and the rest. I saw reviews busting on Law for being so beautiful--a tragedy we share, of course--but honestly, I thought he did well at getting to the heart of Jack.

It really helped me to see the locations where they filmed: the statehouse, Burden's Landing, Mason City, and more.

My one quibble is the ending-- I love the book because it tells a tale of redemption, of making things right, of reconciliation--I think the film hints at it, but doesn't quite get there.

As a foreigner with not much ideas about U.S. history and politics, I have watched this movie with no bias and quite some problems to understand many phrases of Southern accents (which are quite fascinating on their own). However, it appeared to me as an interesting and pretty complex political story of the usual fight between rich and poor, honesty and false promises, racism, corruption... you name it. Even though the movie can catch one's attention for its full running time, some of the desired tension and drama are missing, and much of the final outcome is quite predictable. Overall, it's certainly no Oscar candidate, but also doesn't deserve low ratings as some (politically motivated) users distribute.

In the 50's, in Louisiana, the smart populist, manipulative and wolf hick Willie Stark (Sean Penn) is elected governor with the support of the lower social classes. He joins a team composed of his bodyguard and friend Sugar Boy (Jackie Earle Haley); the journalist from an aristocratic family Jack Burden (Jude Law); the lobbyist Tiny Duffy (James Gandolfini); and his mistress Sadie Burke (Patricia Clarkson), to face the opposition of the upper classes. When the influent Judge Irwin (Anthony Hopkins) supports a group of politicians in their request of impeachment, Stark assigns Jack to find some dirtiness along the life of Irwin, leading to a tragedy in the end.

In spite of having a constellation in the cast, "All the King's Man" is a low paced and boring soap opera. The dramatic and tragic story has some good moments, when the Machiavellian Willie Stark uses his political skills to develop strategies and revert situations, but the lead character of Jude Law is annoying. His romance with Anne Stanton, performed by Kate Winslet, is simply awful and unreasonable, and I do not know why the relationship of Jack with Judge Irwin is only disclosed by Mrs. Burden after his death. The cinematography and art decoration are very beautiful, but I did not like the story. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Grande Ilusão" ("The Great Illusion")