ONE BRAVURA PERFORMANCE DOESN'T GO A LONG WAY.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

There is a basic tenet of moviemaking: Show, don't tell.

Adapter-director Steven Zaillian pretty much ignored it for his remake of ``All the King's Men.''

Perhaps he thought that the awards-entombed words of Robert Penn Warren's great political novel were enough to carry the film.

Surely, spoken by an ultra-distinguished cast with Sean Penn at the very top of the ticket, those words would make this a worthy successor to the 1949 film version, which won the best picture Academy Award.

But Zaillian, who directed ``Searching for Bobby Fisher'' and ``A Civil Action'' and won his own Oscar for writing ``Schindler's List,'' should have followed the rule. Aside from parts of Penn's performance as Willie Stark, which is an audiovisual universe unto itself, and the wise decision to actually shoot the picture in Louisiana (Robert Rossen filmed his likably scruffier version in California), there's not enough to look at here, and even less to get emotionally or intellectually invested in.

Larger-than-life figure

Famously based on the career of Louisiana populist Huey P. Long, ``King's Men'' charts the Jack Burden (Jude Law), a young journalist from an old-wealth family who helps Willie become governor, then signs on as the suddenly monstrous boss' resentful, compromised aide.

Trouble is, we don't really see how idealistic man-of-the-people Stark becomes a crook and a dictator -- he just is one day, and everybody tells us so. We believe he's dirty -- he even makes jokes about it during his stump speeches, which otherwise resemble those of a Hitler who's lost all muscular control -- but a few examples of exactly how that manifested would have been interesting.

But no, we just have to take it on people's word. The whole movie is like that. A school fire that proves pivotal to Stark's career? We read about it in a newspaper.

Willie's upset landslide election victory? We hear about it while watching Jack play solitaire.

The suicide of a character we're supposed to care about? The incident and its aftermath are so bluntly telegraphed that even those unfamiliar with the story won't be the least surprised. Still, we're only informed about it third-hand, via phone call and a weeping woman.

You can argue that this is really Burden's tale, and that we, therefore, experience it as he does. That would be fine if Jack were built into the full tragic figure he is in the book -- a guy whose inability to fully commit to anything that matters to him condemns him to moral purgatory. But that's just kind of hinted at here, and Law can't bring it out in a way that ever makes you feel the character's pain and self-loathing.

Big names, small work

Every other role is barely a sketch of a person, despite their all being played by a thespic A team that includes Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, Patricia Clarkson, Mark Ruffalo, James Gandolfini and Kathy Baker.

Penn, of course, blows all and sundry out of the bayou with the sheer bravura of his power-lovin' Stark. Even if you can't understand half of the words that roar out of that gumbo-inflected mouth, and even if all of those spastic arm movements start to look silly after awhile, there's no denying the skill and weird imagination that went into the work. Plus, Penn can be extremely nuanced during Stark's quieter and more insinuating moments -- not enough to make us think that we ever learn anything about the man behind the politician, but sufficient to indicate that he has many fascinating facets in there somewhere.

Little more than talk

Zaillian does make evocative use of Cajun state locales and landmarks, but again, not much more than talk happens in them. There is a burlesque ice skating sequence, but that's about as visual as the storytelling gets.

Whenever the unnaturally stylized dialogue may not put the point across, have no fear; James Horner's ridiculously portentous score will tell you exactly what you're supposed to make of it. ``O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' soundtrack compiler T-Bone Burnett saves our ears when he can with some nicely selected songs from the region and era, which has been changed from the book's 1930s to a nondescript 1950s. Which, by the way, makes absolutely no historical sense. If you know anything about the kind of demagogue Huey Long was, you'll know that his brand of socio-fascism was as dead in America after World War II as he was.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

ALL THE KING'S MEN - Two stars

(PG-13: violence, sex, nudity)

Starring: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Anthony Hopkins, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, James Gandolfini.

Director: Steven Zaillian.

Running time: 2 hr. 8 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: All talk, hardly any action in this uninvolving remake of the 1949 Oscar-winner.