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'All the King's Men' can't save this movie

Kept in suspense for nine months, moviegoers have been waiting for Steven Zaillian's updated film remake of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning All The King's Men, originally scheduled for release at the end of last year, just in time for the Oscar deadline.

But you would not need to have your expectations raised that long nor have any recollection of the 1949 Best Picture Academy Award-winning version of this tale of increasingly corrupt Louisiana Gov. Willie Stark to find the ponderous, self-important new film less than stirring. At its center is the unlikely but astutely cast Sean Penn as Stark, a fictional version of legendary hick-to-master-wheeler-dealer Huey Long, giving a galvanizing, career-topping performance, but it is trapped in a film that otherwise keeps viewers at arm's length.

Sony Pictures 'All the King's Men' C- The verdict: A clumsy remake of the tale of political rise and fall, from which only Penn emerges victorious. Director: Steven Zaillian Starring: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, James Gandolfini, Patricia Clarkson Run time: 120 minutes Release date: Sept. 22, 2006 Rating: PG-13 for an intense sequence of violence, sexual content and partial nudity. See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'All the King's Men'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Zaillian establishes his epic tone — as in slow — early on, with an overhead tracking shot of the state seal on the floor of the Louisiana State Capitol building, complemented by James Horner's anything but subtle anthem-like musical theme. The shot will eventually have its payoff in the violent final moments of the film, but it makes for a pretentious opening from which the film never really recovers.

Even if you knew nothing about Long, you would recognize Stark's personal and political trajectory. Coaxed to run for the state's top spot by king-maker Tiny Duffy (The Sopranos' James Gandolfini, who still sounds rooted in New Jersey), Stark learns he is being set up to lose and that awareness ignites his campaign. Once in office, the realities of the situation start sinking in, and his grandiose promises to the people begin to be compromised. He learns how the system works and the power of the office begins to go to his head.

He hires the only man he trusts, a once idealistic newspaper reporter, Jack Burden (a floridly narrating Jude Law), who sees how government really works and tries to wash the knowledge away with a liquor bottle. Eventually facing impeachment for reasons that Zaillian's script muddies, Stark sics Burden on Judge Irwin (an uncomfortable Anthony Hopkins) to find dirt from his past with which to blackmail him.

His digging leads Burden back to his former love, Anne Stanton (Kate Winslet), daughter of the previous governor, and her brother Adam (Mark Ruffalo), an earnest doctor who becomes implicated in Stark's shady medical center scam. We see the three of them in frequent, repetitive flashbacks, as Zaillian methodically lays out the pieces of a mosaic that leads to the film's bloody climax.

Before that, however, we get numerous plot threads that go nowhere. Stark's football-playing college student son is introduced, for example, but his story is left dangling. The superb Patricia Clarkson plays Stark staffer and occasional lover Sadie Burke, the role that won an Oscar for Mercedes McCambridge 57 years ago, but here the part is curiously truncated. For a film given the luxury of nine months of extra post-production time, the editing job of Wayne Wahrman is clumsy at best.

Fortunately there is Penn, whose bluster, swagger and bull-headed oratory are worth watching throughout the film's two hours-plus. He gets the "king" right, but his men (and women) hit a variety of notes, most of them false, and All the King's Men ends up in pieces that refuse to be put together again.