- 7
...aims higher than others, and hits.
—Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times
- 6
...ultimately inferior to ... Robert Rossen's 1949 Academy Award winner.
—Ken Fox TV Guide
- 6
...well-played but often tedious...
—Eric Meyerson filmcritic.com
- 5
...a royal disappointment.
—Richard Roeper Chicago Sun-Times
- 5
It's almost always a bad idea to remake a classic movie.
—Peter Rainer Christian Science Monitor
- 5
Far from a great drama, this King is a pretender to the throne, a glossy, pretentious mediocrity.
—Pam Grady Reel
- 5
Second screen adaptation of all-American mega-fiction drowns in ponderous metaphors.
—Michael Atkinson Village Voice
- 5
Seems like every year around this time, a group of serious, mostly British actors decide to affect exaggerated Southern accents and don period costumes, in the service of making some popular novel look ridiculously affected onscreen, and that's exactly what's going on here.
—Luke Y. Thompson E!
- 4
...the movie is populated with depressives creeping toward doom in a somnolent noir setting that feels ill-suited to Stark?s rambunctious career.
—Ella Taylor LA Weekly
- 4
...a flaccid remake...
—Leah Rozen People
- 4
Overthought, overwrought and thuddingly underwhelming...
—Peter Travers Rolling Stone
- 4
...a bloated adaptation of the classic political novel...
—Noel Murray Onion AV Club
- 4
...a lethally dull and self-important remake...
—Lou Lumenick New York Post
- 4
...doesn't get our vote.
—Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly
- 3
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.
—A. O. Scott New York Times
- 3
...Penn, like practically everyone else on screen, flails around in All the King's Men to no avail.
—Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune