[...] Penn fills the screen with this cagey and cunning character, his oratory so loquacious an enemy would vote for him and a body seeming to move in several different directions with every step. In one of his greatest screen performances, Penn nails the contradictory and compelling genius of a small-time rural pol, who dreams and schemes his way to the top of a corrupt system designed to keep men like him on the outside. Writer-director Steven Zaillian's questionable solution is to fit this rambunctious portrait of unruly Southern politics in a monumental frame where Southern Gothic meets Leni Riefenstahl.

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