Very mediocre

Rating: 5/10 (23 November 2012)

This was a wholly mediocre film. Neither tremendously gripping nor completely boring, it ranged somewhere in between. I did not come away from the movie with a better feeling for the true Lincoln in the final months of his life, and the movie itself was not anything to behold. Of course, trying to capture the essential Lincoln is certainly not an easy task, but this characterization came across as somewhat aloof, with the President frequently telling his unique stories to his own amusement and sometimes without a recognizable context. The historical events were poorly integrated into a larger context, and the way the last four months were focused was too myopic in my view. I imagine this film to be the sort that an AP U.S. history teacher shows when he or she is off of work for a couple days, but probably only because that person teaches in Illinois and showing this film is proverbial in the "Land of Lincoln." Although most of the other people I went with seemed to enjoy this work, I left the theater still in search of an accurate and rich film portrayal of one of the greatest U.S. Presidents.