This film charts the life of one of America's most colourful politicians in an unbiased and very entertaining manner. Long's speeches were awesome. Absolutely tailor made for the audience before him, and guaranteed to win them over. It wasn't just his Louisiana electorate he won over though. At the time of his assassination in 1935 he controlled the board of education, the state militia several local police forces, as well as most of the state legislature, and most importantly, as senator, he also controlled state governor, O.K. Allen. Huey's brother Earl once said of O.K.: "A leaf once blew in the window of OK's office and landed on his desk and he signed it."
Ken Burn's is even handed in his criticism of Long, and justly so. Long did take Louisiana out of the mud by building over 2000 miles of road and several bridges over the Mississippi. Burn's manages to commit to posterity what would otherwise have been written off as a dark period in US political history. Again, I'm all in favour of stories that should be told.