A piercing, if not very subtle, adaptation of Robert Penn Warren’s Pulitzer Prize-winning political novel about the rise and eventual corruption of a man of the people. Broderick Crawford is a blowzy, booming force as Willie Stark, a man who means well at the start of his political career and still believes he means well at its tragic, compromised end. The entire picture, unfortunately, operates at Crawford’s volume level, which is probably why both he and it won Oscars.
