Literate, well-made, but unmoving and unexciting...

Rating: 6/10 (3 October 2013)

Try as he might, director Steven Spielberg cannot get the emotional rivers running beneath this portrait of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, and his efforts to obtain passage for the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in the House of Representatives in the year 1865, which would formally abolish slavery in the country. Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis is predictably solid as the story-telling Lincoln, usually undermining his political anger and frustration with wry humor and a kind of cracker-barrel wisdom, and Sally Field is quite good (if perhaps uneasily cast) as the First Lady, an emotionally unstable Mary Todd Lincoln, yet the supporting performances fall short. Tommy Lee Jones does absolutely nothing with the role of Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and Jackie Earle Haley continues to look lost amongst the talent as Confederate States Vice President Alexander H. Stephens. Spielberg takes a homespun approach to much of the visuals (cinematographer Janusz KamiÅ„ski's camera doting on Lincoln and child in a rocking chair, bathed in a lemony glow), but the verbal standoffs between adversaries (despite some prickly dialogue) are surprisingly stilted. **1/2 from ****