Movie Pick
Squeaky Political Machine
All The King's Men
originally published September 27, 2006
Kate Winslet & Sean Penn
Academy Award-winning screenwriter and acclaimed director Steven Zaillian’s adaptation of All the King’s Men epitomizes the “clear some space on the mantle, we’re gonna win awards” film. There’s just one problem; the film’s not good enough to win any. Based on Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, already made into a multiple Oscar winner in 1949, All the King’s Men stars two Academy Award winners (Sean Penn and Anthony Hopkins), three Academy Award nominees (Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson), and two multiple Emmy winners (James Gandolfini and Kathy Baker). I don’t doubt the necessity for a new version of this All-American, under-the-bedclothes peek at politics and the corruption of power. In a post-Watergate, post-Iran Contra, post-Iraq War II world, where special interest groups - not the people - rule, faith in the government has been eroded. No matter to what purpose Warren may have originally intended his book, Zaillian uses the Shakespearean figure of Willie Stark, based on real-life politician Huey “Kingfish” Long, to portray a man of the people, drunk with power but sober enough to use it properly. This King’s Men is a powerful democratic tract that reminds us the powerless have the power so long as they get out and vote. Modern America may have become an oligarchy, but this film declares the system not to be broken - just ill-used. Where have all the populist public servants gone? Willie Stark (a too larger-than-life, histrionic Penn) may be self-righteous and corrupt of manner, but he stays true to the “hicks” that elected him in droves. Zaillian’s film redeems democracy while exposing the truth of politics. Corruption must be met with corruption, and Willie Stark is rural America’s Machiavellian prince.
Zaillian’s stylistic decision to fashion a 1950s melodrama undermines the seriousness of his film and, ultimately, his message. Characters intone; events unfold. Inexplicably, Zaillian forgoes subtlety and subtext in favor of bludgeoning symbolism and pretentious theatrics. No more effective way to hamper a superb cast exists than saddling them with amateurish accents. Gandolfini sounds the worst, but at least he doesn’t say as much as Law, whose Jack Burden is the eyes through which we view Willie Stark and the drawling voice in which the grim narration is delivered. Worse, the accents often are overpowered by a carnivalesque James Horner score that brings to mind Danny Elfman. Thankfully, this powerful story propels itself. The whole of All the King’s Men equals so much more than the sum of its surprisingly defective parts. Not even the finishing touch of Southern gothic can derail this political machine, programmed to remind us that only we, the people, can rescue America from the dusty rubble of vice-ridden politics.
Movie Pick
‘Cause It’s Fun
Jackass: Number Two
originally published September 27, 2006
Steve-O
No matter how far they’ve come, all 11 jackasses remain wholly committed to this apparently never-ending series of daring (read: dumb) stunts. Johnny Knoxville may have starred in The Dukes of Hazzard, but he gamely presses on, nearly being blown up, gored and trampled. Second-in-command Bam Margera never uses his MTV series "Viva la Bam" to excuse himself from facing down a vicious king cobra. Still, infamous yet un-famous Steve-O remains the biggest jackass, posing as shark bait (he painfully pierces his cheek with a fishhook), chugging a beer with his butt, and attaching a leech to his eyeball. All the endangerment proves worth the risk, as the sequel proves itself very funny. But don’t chalk up the Jackass franchise’s macho magnetism to one-dimensional fun. Jackass: Number Two re-masculates the modern young male. This ongoing game of one-upmanship, the danger zone of which continues to increase (poor Margera knows this, remarking in Number Two how he prays there’s no Number Three), validates the troupe’s manhood. Why do you think so many teens have been injured trying to replicate the dangerous stunts? Not only does a suburban stampede look boss, but surviving it separates the men from the boys. Knoxville, Margera, and company have taken on sports idol status in the eyes of their cult of devotees, juvenile and adult. This athletic equivalence may explain the free pass the crew has been given for a preoccupation with exposing their gross assortment of hairy shapes and sizes. Football players are forgiven the homoeroticism of their sport’s man-on-man action. Why not these professional jackasses?
How the film escaped an NC-17 is beyond me. Is defecating in noxious close-up not enough? It’s not even funny and is far more offensive than the censored shot of Chris “Partyboy” Pontius sipping horse semen. (The minds behind Jackass: Number Two should take a page from the "South Park" playbook: never acknowledge that you’ve gone too far. Once you deem one stunt too disgusting, denying you’ve crossed the line of decency becomes that much harder.) The brilliance of Knoxville and crew being believably transformed into disgustingly naked old people in order to play games with an unsuspecting public outweighs the pounds of feces and cups of vomit. When asked why he’d branded a penis on the buttock of buddy Margera, Ryan Dunn responds, “Because it was fun.” The same could be used to defend seeing Jackass: Number Two. I prefer reminding people the film is a surrealist, masochistic work of art.
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