All the King's Men (1949)

Oh my. This one isn't so much fun to watch given the political climate for the past 8 years or given the current election's turn straight into theatre of the absurd. The basic idea is that the good guy from a small town who is self-educated wants to change his small town, does so to a small extent, but then gets hoodwinked into running for governor to split the vote. Once he learns of the double-cross he really runs for governor and all hell breaks loose. He goes bad, of course, running his political machine on corruption, intimidation, coercion, and murder and basically gets away with it all. A little too familiar for comfort at this particular moment so I can see why Sean Penn et al remade it a few years ago and I can understand why it didn't do so well. It lacks hope of any sort--the only hopeful character is killed during his assassination of the governor--and points to the fact that we can all be corrupted or follow along with corruption to make our individual lives easier. Ugh. I need an Obama poster about right now.