A Film for Historians...Plodding and Slow

Rating: 5/10 (28 January 2013)

If you go to see this film expecting another trite and mundane rendition of the life of President Abraham Lincoln, you will be sorely disappointed. "Lincoln" is a plodding account of the 16th President's efforts to pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, which, coincidentally, mirror the final months of his life. Spielberg's effort to lend humanity to another episode of history falls short of the mark. During the initial 10 minutes my wife and I looked at each other as if to say, "I hope the next two hours and twenty minutes don't move as painfully as this." Everything "Lincolnese" eventually gets trotted out, from two enlisted men reciting the Gettysburg Address (shades of the MGM short of the 1930's where the blind soldier does the same, not realizing that he is speaking to Lincoln himself), to every "Lincolism" that can possibly be squeezed into the script. SPOILER ALERT: Eventually, we come to understand how a presidentially approved conspiracy leads to the amendment's passage, but we get there much in the way that we would get from Philadelphia to New York by way of London. Daniel Day Lewis, Hal Holbrook, and Tommy Lee Jones are magnificent actors, and do yeoman's jobs supporting a script that is, at times, laughable. The film could very well have ended with Lincoln leaving the White House for Ford's Theatre, but it still moves on. If the anti-climax of showing Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address was an absolute necessity, I personally would have faded to black with highlights on the faces of Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, who, in reality was standing only feet from the President as he delivered his speech.