The opposite of Duel

Rating: 6/10 (11 January 2013)

Duel is a great movie.
We get tension, excitement, action. We get taken in to the movie. The story is expressed with few words but no one misunderstands what is happening.
Lincoln, the movie, is dull. Verbose; isn't sufficient to described the deluge of words. At no point is there any involvement. I heard some people were teary eyed over the opening scenes when soldiers quoted from Lincolns speech/address. I saw schmaltz.
DDL certainly looked the part of Lincoln, or at least resembled the caricature I am familiar with. But after 45 minutes I had had enough of his role as it seemed to be the same scene repeated over and over again. The scenes that are meant to be more important were clearly labeled by the generic music that starts up - the same horns and orchestra that we heard in SPR, among others.
From what I have read of American history it is also not a necessarily accurate movie.
The weirdest part for me was the ending. The movie started with Lincoln already president and having won a second term. The ending was of his son at a theatre where it is announced the president had been shot at another theatre. Perhaps I missed what the point of that was. Having missed 99% of his life by the time the movie started, probably because of how it could have portrayed him in a different light, his death was unnecessary other than for tear jerking.
The movie could have been called The Vote, or The Thirteenth Amendment - as a better description of the events covered. It certainly wasn't a 'warts-and-all' story of Lincoln.