All the King's Men

All The King's Men is one of those movies where the performances and the social commentary do all the heavy lifting, covering up a lot of sins in the script and pacing. It cannot be overstated how the performances and themes tie into one another in near-perfect harmony. Broderick Crawford is an absolute beast as Willie Stark, a humble small town lawyer who wants to change the system, until he finds that the only way to get into the system is to play like the system, and dives in head-first. Stark is a fascinating mix of benevolence and tyranny, wanting to up-end long-standing political traditions and dynasties, giving back to the public and improving lives, but his methods of getting his platform across the goal line is despotic and malevolent, manipulating and bribing and blackmailing people into doing his bidding. It is a fascinating character study in how even the noblest of ambitions and humblest of people can be corrupted by having access to unchecked power. Alongside Crawford are a slew of side characters who reluctantly facilitate Crawford's rise. There's Jack Burden (played by John Ireland), who starts as the reporter who first gives Stark publicity and credibility, and then becomes his fix-it man, digging up dirt on people Stark needs to break. He ropes in an entire family from Burden's hometown, making the kind, honest uncle Attorney General, the skeptical doctor nephew the head of his new free hospital, and taking the niece Anne (who was once a love interest for Jack) as an extramarital lover. The story then becomes a question of if there is anybody willing to stop Stark, when he either has the ammo to destroy someone (or worse), or has morally compromised all the good people around him. The acting by those good people is complex and intelligent, people who want to believe that Stark is good because of how he has transformed the state, but have to wrestle with how he got those changes done. The people love Stark and don't see his corruption, which makes it all the more complicated a situation. If all this sounds familiar to you, you're not imagining things. Stark's rise and popularity could be applied to a fair number of politicians around the world who became cults of personality, whose ardent followers will absolutely never lose the faith. There's a reason for that: the movie is based in large part on the life of a real American politician, Huey Long. It's a cycle that repeats, time and again, all across the globe, so the themes of All The King's Men never gets old: power can either corrupt the good, or bring out in dormant bad in those already prone to it, and it's up to people to not fall for the spell in the words from these demagogues, lest we get dragged down in the mud with them. As much as the acting and the themes explored are stunning, I can't say ATKM was the home run it should be. You'd think a political drama made in 1949 would be this measured, almost turgid affair, but ATKM is not here for that. There's enough story beats in its hour and forty-nine minutes for a three hour movie, but ATKM whip-saws through them at the speed of light. Stark's transition from kindly, honest, small-town lawyer to incipient warlord happens in a single scene. I paused it to go to the bathroom at one point, sure we were halfway in, and we hadn't even gotten a half-hour in. That kind of pace is exhausting. It also doesn't leave much room for character development. Character development, relationships, and whole arcs get either briefly summarized or left by the wayside because ATKM has to speed-run through eleven more plot points in the next five minutes. There are so many moments where you'll go "hey, wait a minute", but ATKM is not interested in waiting. By the end, you'll swear you've watched a four-part limited series. This blitzkrieg of a story also doesn't really have a solid protagonist. I know the idea is that Stark draws in everybody and corrupts them (or has leverage on them), but there's only so many times I can see a character hem and haw and wail and moan about being under Stark's thumb, but then stay in his orbit anyway. As Stark's fix-it guy, Jack Burden is probably in the best seat to step away and blow the lid off the whole enterprise, but he never considers it. He'll stew and chew his lip and bemoan his position, but he keeps going along with it, even digging up dirt on old friends. The movie could've used just one person who saw through the veneer, the lone voice crying out about how evil and corrupt it all really was. ATKM is a fascinating watch for acting and for watching people become morally compromised, and it's probably truer to life to not have that one good person fight back, but it makes for a rather bleak movie. ATKM is well worth a watch. It's a stunningly acted movie. Crawford won the Oscar for acting, and he deserved it. Stark is a complex character, at once a brilliant orator and a passionate advocate, but all too willing to get his hands dirtier than those he called crooks to begin with. The flaws I've outlined don't make ATKM a bad movie by any stretch. I just couldn't appreciate it as much as some may.