Badmovies.org Forum

I just finished watching this one with my wife, and we both enjoyed it a great deal.  Robert Redford directed this fascinating look at the trial and unjust execution of Mary E. Surrat (for those of you who had a basketball coach for high school history class, she ran the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators plotted the death of Abraham Lincoln).  Highly accurate and brilliantly acted, this movie is a fascinating slice of an ugly chapter in American history.  Kevin Spacey is particularly brilliant as Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, a close friend of Lincoln's and tireless crusader for vengeance against those who killed his chief.   But the man who played Major Aiken, Mrs. Surrat's defense attorney, was riveting in his performance.  He definitely stole the show!

Apparently Redford is planning on making a number of films dealing with historical events.  My only hope is that he will choose some moments that actually make our country look good.  But then again, honest self-criticism is something all free countries need, and even Mrs. Surrat's contemporaries came to believe that she had been railroaded in a crusade for vengeance.  I look forward to his next movie.

I liked it well enough. I saw it with my parents when they were visiting because it was either The Conspirator or the remake of Arthur.

I'd say my main problem with the movie is that Redford is merely a competent director, not a great one. I got the sense that, because this is Redford, there was a none too subtle commentary on the Iraq war going on. Thinking back, I was probably reading more into it than is present on the screen.

Great cast he put together for this one, though. (That was Kevin Kline, by the way.) Anybody with the good sense to put Tom Wilkinson in a movie has quality taste in actors.

Hopefully Redford succeeds in putting more movies about American history up on the screen. Did this do well enough in the theaters for more to get made? Maybe I'll finally see a movie made of the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Molasses_Disaster)! Man, I would love to see that.