October 5th, 2006

   The best thing about the Toronto International Film Festival was its reputation as a showcase for unveiling all of the big (and occasionally important) movies and performances you will see in the coming movie season. From Heath Ledger as a heroin addict in Candy, Julie Christie as a woman wasting away from Alzheimers in Away From Her, and Dermot Mulroney as the handsomest cancer victim Ive ever seen in Griffin & Phoenix, to Sigourney Weaver in Snow Cake as an eccentric autistic with a passion for shadow puppets and eating snow, it was obvious that the actors all seemed to be competing for Oscars with Vote For Me stamped on their foreheads.

The glut of films I saw in Toronto are already heading this way, and the first up at bat is All the Kings Men, a sorry and misguided re-hash of Robert Penn Warrens famous 1946 novel that fictionalized the life of Huey P. Long, the Louisiana swamp rat turned governor who was assassinated on September 8, 1935. Called the Kingfish by voters who turned up at the polls in record numbers, his rise to fame on the promises of renewal, reform, and redemption for the poor and disenfranchised hicks of Louisiana who were wiped out by the Depression was understandable, if unpredictable. The lurid but colorful ways in which he fell for his own cracker-barrel rhetoric, turned into an evil demagogue, and became the role model for every crooked Southern politician for the next 70 years (including several disgraced Louisiana governors, state senators, and even the character of Boss Finley in Tennessee Williams Sweet Bird of Youth) are symbols of political corruption that plague the Delta to this day. The novels post-Depression setting, in which the power-mad alter-ego of Huey P. Long was called Willie Stark, makes perfect sense for the same kind of gullibile populist naivete that got Adolf Hitler elected in Germany. So does the postwar timing of Robert Rossens greatly admired Oscar-winning 1949 film that also won a Best Actor prize for Broderick Crawford. For some senseless reason, writer-director Steven Zaillian has changed the new All the Kings Men to the 1950s, one of the dullest decades in Louisiana history and a time of no political significance. The impact of the novel is lost, although unfortunately the faux poetry in the books long, rambling descriptive passages rubs a phony literary patina on an already weakened story and makes the actors look silly and desperate. (The endless sweat balls on Jude Laws forehead are not from the humidity.) Faulknerian stream-of-conscious can be fascinating on the pages of Southern Gothic literature, but not when it pours out of the mouths of British actors like Jude Law, Kate Winslet and Sir Anthony Hopkins, as lost in the moss-covered muck as alligators in Alaska. As Sadie, the cagey newshen who helps Willie rise to power before becoming his bitter, disillusioned mistress (a longer and more important role in the 1949 version that won an Oscar for Mercedes McCambridge), even Patricia Clarkson, a New Orleans native who knows an authentic drawl when she hears one, disappears in the muddle. Shes elevated to an important staff job in the governors corrupt inner circle, but we never know what she does because we never see her doing it. She just kind of hangs out, miserable and disoriented. So do Kate Winslet and Mark Ruffalo, as ill-fated siblings, and Mr. Hopkins, as an aristocratic judge whose move to impeach the governor is foiled by a blackmail plot that drives him to suicide. Jude Law, sporting the phoniest accent in the film, plays Jack Burden, the idealistic journalist promoted to easily manipulated press secretary whose principles turn to gumbo. He frames the film and narrates it in a voice that sounds ossified. Working without a compass, this impressive all-star principals are easily upstaged by Willie Starks stoogesa fat moron named Tiny (James Gandolfini) and a poker-faced bodyguard called Sugar Boy (memorably played by the sinister and chilling Jackie Earle Haley). Mr. Zaillian knows how to cast them, even if he doesnt know how to direct them.

All of which brings me, reluctantly, to Sean Penn. We know he can act, but as Willie Stark, theres something missing. He starts out so dumb and straight he only drinks Orange Crush, then ends up a vicious, sleazy drunk, betraying his own ideals and poisoning everyone who believes in him, loud and volcanic but hardly imposinga wet, bulbous, beefy shortcake of a dictator. Hes supposed to be the bare-knuckle focus of the film, but Zaillians pretentious script and meandering direction divert attention to too many other tangential characters, diluting the juice and punch of the epic 1949 original. Mr. Penn has force, stumping through the sugar cane fields appealing to his fellow hicks to stand up for their rights and collect their own rewards, while the only rewards he collects are his ownand theirs, too. But too many aspects of his character are left unexplored. The rise and fall of a redneck who wins the faith of the common people and betrays them to line his own coffers is not a new story. Think Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd, or James Cagney in A Lion is in the Streets. Both were based on the turbulent reign of Huey P. Long. This is the first time hes been denied the fire and fury to become the star of his own story. Despite handsome camerawork and rich details (moss-covered live oaks, decaying plantations, and plates of boiled crawfish), this sad failure to improve a film classic is an errand for fools. Its slow, talkative, and boring, and the melodramatic ending lacks a vital emotional impact. Worse still, nothing about it is reminiscent of the actual Huey P. Long. In interviews, Mr. Zaillian says he avoided any attempt to be influenced by either the man or the legendary 1949 film. Too bad, because he might have learned something. Archival footage of the real Huey P. Long is a matter of public record, easy to obtain, and if you visit the State Capitol in Baton Rouge where he was murdered (the bullet holes are a tourist attraction), you can also see the man himself. In the unsettling photos and oil paintings of the real Huey P. Long, he looks like Broderick Crawford, not Sean Penn.

Flyboys is a rowdy, well-made action movie about American pilots who traveled to France in 1917 to form the daring, heroic air defense team known as the Lafayette Escadrille. The airplane had just become the major instrument of destruction in a war that claimed nine million lives, and this squadron of daredevils became fearless icons in the hearts of the French people. This film, directed by Tony Bill, chronicles the rivalries, prejudices, loyalties, and friendships of nine new American arrivals, barracked in a chateau in Verdun with a lion named Whiskey for a mascot (in real life, the Lafayette Escadrille had twothe other one was named Soda), but theres not a lot of character development; the movie is more about what they do, not who they are. The director is Tony Bill, the former actor filmmaker, who has done a skillful job of blending period atmosphere and narrative style with breathlessly exhilarating aerial action. Because he was an unproven novice himself in 1961, when he made his debut as Frank Sinatras kid brother in Come Blow Your Horn, he believes in hiring unknowns. Except for James Franco, as the Texas cowboy who falls in love with a French peasant and risks everything to save her from the Germans, and the wonderful, gimlet-eyed Jean Reno, as the French commander who finds himself constantly bending the rules to protect the American flyboys, you wont spot a familiar face, but the meaty cast delivers with an impact that is fresh and solid as Sears. This is a good thing, because Flyboys depends on more fire in the sky than some audiences might like. But the one-on-one bomber sequences, like giant dragonflies in mortal combat, can only be described as awesome. Six years in preparation and $60-million in execution, all independently raised, the film creates all of the bombers and tracer bullets so authentically and with such terror and accuracy that you cannot believe the war footage isnt happening at the minute you are watching it. The result guarantees a thrill a minute for all ages, and a few tears, too, in an old-fashioned kind of war movie with a heart (in the best kind of tradition) that keeps you on the edge of your seat with your mouth wide open.