Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

All the Way Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 3, 2016

My home state of Oregon may not be known as a cultural bulwark, perhaps more famous for the likes of Tonya Harding than for more prestigious hosting duties it provided to artists like Ernest Bloch, but for theater lovers, Oregon is a bit of an oasis on the west coast, with a number of incredibly fine companies not necessarily limited to its larger cities. One of these groups is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival which is a major mover and shaker (not to mention employer) in the charming southern Oregon town of Ashland. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has a beautiful outdoor theater that is supposedly a replica of the Globe (I can’t vouch for its absolute authenticity, though I can vouch for how hard the seats are), but among the more interesting things about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is that it isn’t necessarily relegated to “only” offering Shakespeare as part of its annual seasons. While there may be a certain Shakespearian tragedy aspect to the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, All the Way was actually commissioned by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as part of its commendable pursuit of creating a “history cycle” built around the United States that would be at least somewhat analogous to the famous Shakespeare “history plays”. That particular production didn’t have the marquee value of one Bryan Cranston in the role of Johnson, but once Cranston did essay the part (beginning in 2013 in Massachusetts), it became the latest in a series of signature acting pieces by Cranston, who has proven over and over again how facile he is at fully inhabiting characters. Cranston ultimately won a Tony for his performance once the play matriculated to Broadway, and his performance accounts for one of the twelve Emmy nominations this HBO version currently has racked up, awaiting the awards ceremony that is scheduled to be broadcast in a couple of weeks. All the Way is a fascinating character study, though its narrative is kind of bifurcated, perhaps intentionally so, charting the course of a couple of epochal incidents in Johnson’s presidency.

The cover of All the Way highlights two three initialed acronyms that became synonymous with the mid- to late sixties, LBJ and MLK, and while it’s true that the interactions between Johnson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Anthony Mackie) provide a kind of framework around which much of the story revolves, this is more of an ensemble piece than might initially be expected, albeit one with the towering presence of Cranston as Johnson at its center. The first half or so of the film deals with the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy and Johnson’s attempt to push the Civil Rights bill through congress before the presidential election of 1964, in a supposed homage to Johnson’s fallen predecessor.

Part of what undercuts Robert Schenkkan’s teleplay (adapted from his own play) is the fact that it attempts to inject suspense into a story that many will already know the conclusion of. That said, even with the not exactly surprising denouement that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does in fact pass congress, All the Way details some of the machinations that got the bill through a rather vicious maelstrom. There’s some nice work in this part of the teleplay (and actually later as well) by Frank Langella as Senator Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia, an old mentor of Johnson’s whom Johnson calls “Uncle Dick”. Russell exemplifies the “old South”, namely the Dixiecrats whose obstinance created one side of the vise that Johnson found himself being squeezed by as he attempted to navigate the roiling waters of pushing through the Act. The other side of the vise was of course King and his many acolytes. A number of supporting characters help fill in the nooks and crannies of the tale, with Stephen Root’s take on J. Edgar Hoover coming awfully close to comedy relief at times with a portrayal that suggests Hoover was almost pathologically obsessed with King.

While the competing political and ethical issues underlying the whole Civil Rights movement of the mid-sixties get some lip service, All the Way probably elides too much material to ever make the actual passage of the bill a very emotional event. Also a bit oddly, the denouement just kind of springs up all of a sudden, at which point the teleplay simply segues kind of inartfully to its second main subject, the reelection campaign of 1964. There’s a tenuous tether to the whole Civil Rights aspect in that Johnson needs the “Negro vote” (as it’s referred to repeatedly throughout the piece) in order to win. Again, there’s not exactly a suspense factor as to the ultimate outcome of the election, since Johnson’s landslide victory over Goldwater is still the stuff of legend. All the Way does better in some of its “smaller” moments, including some admittedly fascinating arcana about some of the drama at the Democratic Convention that year involving black delegates who were fighting to be seated.

All the Way probably suffers from trying to do both too much and actually ending up doing too little to ever resonate very deeply. Cranston is a force of nature as Johnson, but Schenkkan’s writing tends to waver back and forth between gritty, “good old boy” aphorisms (Johnson was not exactly known for his delicate vocabulary) and more, well, Shakespearian monologues that are “arty” if not exactly authentic feeling, at least for a character of Johnson’s less than intellectual proclivities. There are a number of great vignettes sprinkled throughout the piece (one especially wonderful one comes near the end, when Johnson is quizzing Hoover about how to spot gay people, in a scene absolutely rife with subtext), but I’m not sure the whole is ever greater than the sum of the parts. The supporting cast has a number of standout players, including Melissa Leo as Lady Bird and Bradley Whitford as Hubert Humphrey, but perhaps because the cast list is so stuffed full, many of the performances feel like they don’t even have an hour to strut and fret on the stage.

All the Way Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

All the Way is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of HBO with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. While the very nature of this outing doesn't offer a lot of opportunity for "wow" visuals, this is an often impeccably sharp and well detailed presentation which offers a natural looking palette and some excellent detail levels, something that's helped by director Jay Roach's preference for extreme close-ups. Commendably, even with those close-ups and great fine detail levels, no "seams" on Cranston's impressive makeup really make themselves known. The piece uses quite a bit of archival newsreel and actual news broadcast footage, and those elements are understandably quite fuzzy looking, often attended by video anomalies like ghosting. Occasionally a few dimly lit interior scenes don't have huge levels of shadow definition, but are almost always above average in that regard.

All the Way Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Similarly to the video presentation, All the Way's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix struggles at times to provide an overwhelming audio experience, but there are nice moments of immersion and even some relatively forceful low end, as in the gunshots that start off the piece (in an auguring of Kennedy's fate). Noisier environments like the cacophonous Democratic Convention of 1964 probably provide the best and most consistent use of the surround channels, but dialogue is always cleanly presented, and fidelity is fine throughout the presentation.

All the Way Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bryan Cranston Becoming LBJ (1080i; 1:55) is a brief but interesting look at Cranston's makeup regimen to become Johnson.


• All the Way: A Walk Through History (1080i; 10:06) is a talking head featurette, with various folks opining on the actual historical story.

All the Way Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kind of like HBO's recent Confirmation, All the Way can't quite overcome the hurdle that many in the audience are going to know how the story ultimately turned out, and so the interest comes not from "what happened" but from "how it happened." The telefilm does a generally admirable job in getting into some of the nooks and crannies of events and even interrelationships, but it's simply too generalist an overview to ever resonate emotionally. One of the few really visceral moments has to do with a completely "inconsequential" supporting character who shows up once at a funeral King is supposedly providing the eulogy for, and who urges the black congregation to "stand up", perhaps one indication that the larger than life characters at the core of this story are simply too titanic for most viewers to relate to. Still, Cranston's performance is superb and he makes All the Way watchable even if it's not especially moving. Technical merits are strong, and with caveats noted, All the Way comes Recommended.