Unbelievably awful waste of time and money

Rating: 1/10 (24 January 2013)

Spoiler Alert - specific spoilers in here.
This is the most ridiculous movie I've watched in a long time. A wasted effort.
I understand this is not an action movie - so why start with a war scene straight out of Saving Private Ryan, play that for ten minutes and then spend the rest of the movie exploring the political machinations of Washington and trying to get around 20 votes to pass slaving reforms. Spoiler alert, it was passed. Oh and right at the start the two black soldiers were able to quote a previous Lincoln speech word perfect, thanks Mr Spielberg, completely believable.. I'm sure that really happened.
Daniel Day Lewis spends WAY too much time talking to the floor, there's absolutely and completely no passion from him, he wanders off into little stories that have little relevance to the topic and at one point even one of the senators buggers off because he can't be arsed listening to yet another boring story.
His son wants to join the Army and Lincoln does his level best to stop him, even taking him to a hospital where he witnesses cartloads of limbs being thrown into a pit but STILL the son signs up BUT Mrs Lincoln completely illogically spends a entire scene berating Lincoln for letting their son sign up - that scene was just put in there so she could show her acting chops, it lost all of it's dramatic effect because Lincoln DID try everything in his power to stop his son signing up, no wonder he spends the entire time looking down and talking to the floor, it's because he gets blamed for everything..
The amendment gets passed (hurrah!) but the reasons for each senator changing from a no to a yes isn't fully explored, it seems almost random, THEN it gets REALLY disjointed and amateurish - Lincoln gets shot, Spielberg spends A LOT of time showing Lincoln leaving the house for the last time and next scene it's some guy in the theater shouting the Presidents been shot, next scene its a doctor declaring him dead at home and then some fantasy sequence with Lincoln giving what I can only imagine is meant to be a soaring speech to a large crowd but it was the dullest speech in the whole movie and should have been moved to DVD extras.
If it's not a Lincoln bio-op then why do the shooting, it was meant to be about the 13th Amendment but why add 30 minutes extra about the assassination. This movie was a wasted opportunity, a confused mess which doesn't know what it wants to be, and just because DDL is in it and it's about abolishing slavery everyone is applauding it but even 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' was better than this pile of dog pooh and that's saying something!