8) All The King’s Men
The 2006 adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren is another movie that shows that Oscar clout isn’t everything. The film had a lot going for it, both behind and in front of the camera, but was a massive critical and financial failure nonetheless.
Academy Award-winning screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York, Moneyball, and Schindler’s List) directed All the King’s Men, but failed to tap into the things that made his previous work so successful. Despite a star-studded cast that included Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson (The Green Mile) and Anthony Hopkins, All the King’s Men failed to live up to its potential and was one form of Oscar bait that nobody bit into.
7) Eye For An Eye
While many films on this list feature large casts full of talented individuals, even smaller films have shown that the best actors don’t always make the best career choices. Take 1996’s Eye for an Eye, for example, a crime thriller starring Academy Award-winner Sally Field, Emmy winner Kiefer Sutherland and four-time Academy Award nominee Ed Harris.
Despite its star studded cast and Oscar-winning director John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, Marathon Man) steering the ship, Eye for an Eye is a tragic misstep that sports a very sour 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Based on the well-received Erika Holzer novel of the same name, Eye for an Eye features Field as a mother who is forced to listen to her teenage daughter get raped over the phone. When the legal system fails to capture the rapist, Field’s character takes it into her own hands to enact swift justice.
What follows is your run-of-the-mill B-movie thriller that somehow managed to pull in an A-list cast and director, while offending the audience with its mean-spirited and crude proceedings. Luckily, all involved were able to bounce back from this major setback in their careers, leaving Eye for an Eye to rot away in the depths of the “psychological thriller” category on Netflix.
