A good way to spoil an interesting subject

Rating: 4/10 (8 June 2016)

For me, Spielberg films fall into two camps: I either love them or I loathe them. That's particularly true of his more recent fare; for every MUNICH he makes a WAR OF THE WORLDS, so he's become a really hit-and-miss director these days. Sadly, LINCOLN can be chalked up as a miss, purely because it's so very dull.
This film is something of a biopic of Abraham Lincoln, although it only focuses on the most important parts of his life, inevitably those surrounding the American Civil War and the 13th Amendment. My question is, why does this film need to be two and a half hours long? Politics can be a dry topic to make a film out of in any case, and all Spielberg succeeds in doing is boring his viewer with one boring, talky, drawn-out scene after another.
It's hard to fault Daniel Day-Lewis, who brings his version of Lincoln to life with seemingly effortless ability; the star-studded cast are also fine and give performances that seem realistic, fitting well into the era. No, it's the dry script and too-large cast that make this hard to sit through. Only during the climactic voting scene do things get mildly enjoyable thanks to the suspense involved; otherwise, this is a film that's good only for insomniacs. I'd much rather read a non-fiction book on the same subject than sit through this wannabe educational film.