Oscar?-winning actor Sean Penn (Best Actor, Mystic River, 2003), two-time Academy Award? nominee Jude Law (Best Supporting Actor, The Talented Mr. Ripley, 1999; Best Actor, Cold Mountain, 2003), four-time Academy Award? nominee Kate Winslet (Best Supporting Actress, Sense and Sensibility, 1995; Iris, 2001, Best Actress, Titanic, 1997; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004), and Oscar? winner Anthony Hopkins (Best Actor, The Silence of the Lambs, 1991) star in this riveting story of a humble man's rise to political power and the destructive force of corruption and betrayal that would ultimately unravel his soul, based on Robert Penn Warren's 1946 classic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Willie Stark (Penn) is an ordinary man from a rural town, demanding that crooked politicians and shady businessmen in Lousiana be held accountable for the collapse of a poorly built school. Urged to run for Governor by a dubious political advisor, Tiny Duffy (three-time Emmy? Award winner James Gandolfini, Lead Actor in a Drama Series, The Sopranos, 2000, 2001, 2003) Stark, finds his voice as a charismatic man of the people. He then befriends a young idealistic journalist, Jack Burden (Law), who eventually ends up working for him. But when Stark asks Burden to dig deep for damaging information on an old family friend, Judge Montague Irwin (Hopkins), Burden begins to question his own morality and Stark's surprising transformation into an inflexible leader that will stop at nothing to remain in power.
Synopsis: Based on the Robert Penn Warren novel. The life of populist Southerner Willie Stark, a political creature loosely based on Governor Huey Long of Louisiana.