All the King's Men

"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." 

"[Zaillian] has given us an intricate, subtly rewarding narrative whose uncompromising nature and undeniable moral seriousness make it far from business as usual" 

"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 (…) Rating: ★½ (out of 4)" 

"The movie's more damnable problem is its irrelevance (...) [The director] has made a movie about monsters, not men, and in 2006, it's the men we most need to fear." 

"It doesn't have anything urgent or even interesting to say." 

"It’s Zaillian’s overdirection that cooks this whole mess into a flavorless gumbo" 

"Zaillian's biggest mistake has been to update the setting to the late Forties and early Fifties (...) The second mistake is the peevish, smirking performance of Sean Penn" 

"There is no real sense of anything at stake (...) It's a typical politician's tale - all talk and no action (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"