absorbing but a little bloodless

Rating: 7/10 (16 June 2013)

This drama of political intrigue has much to recommend it. The story of the passage of the 13th amendment in the house involves a surprising amount of chicanery and political fixing, and it is refreshing to see politics shown as both a devious profession while showing it as one that can do good. And Tommy Lee Jones gives a first rate performance as a Republican radical (back when that was a good thing).
Jones is also notable for creating a sense of a flesh and blood person, which cannot be said for Daniel Day Lewis' Lincoln. It's a good performance, giving you a shrewd but folksy man determined to strike a blow for history, but Spielberg films Lewis much in the way a biblical epic films Jesus. This, and Lewis' careful, overly perfect delivery, make Lincoln more icon than man, and at times he comes across as a Disney animatronic Lincoln.
The movie feels very much like it wants to be the movie about Lincoln school kids see, and so it works hard to be faithful to history. But it also takes pains to be firmly on the right side of history. The few black people in the movie are better spoken than the white people; every one of them speaks like a Yale graduate. I'm not saying there weren't many well-spoken, educated black people at the time, but I cannot help but suspect they weren't *all* like that. Lincoln is given a halo, but I can't help but believe - and perhaps this is simply my own cynicism - that his motives were more complex, his temper less even, his movements less assured, than what you see here. Jones, Lee Pace as a fiery Democrat, and the lead fixer seemed far more interesting as characters than Lincoln, because they seemed far more like real people.
But then, that's how Lincoln is always portrayed. Lincoln as human being is rare, although Hal Holbrooke, one of the many effective stars in this film, played a more flesh and blood version of the man many years ago.
While this could have been better as a movie, it makes for an excellent history lesson, both informative and consistently engaging. It is not a great film, but it's a great thing to show to high school kids.