Felt like a propaganda reel extolling the virtues of American democracy

Rating: 7/10 (14 September 2013)

Altogether this was a decent movie. I can see why Americans who've been taught all about the Civil War and how wonderful and great Lincoln was might thoroughly enjoy this movie.
But for the remaining 7 billion of us on this planet this was a bit of a yawn. While getting a constitutional amendment to pass is exciting fare in the US, those of us who have not already been thoroughly suffused with this aspect of American history are, like, whatever.
Too slow paced. For example, for a 2.5 hour movie it could've shown us a bit more of the Civil War to spice things up (rather than just some burning buildings and corpses strewn about). I guess Spielberg and producers wanted this to be exclusively a hagiography about Lincoln, but I'm sure there are already lots of American high school history textbooks for that. C'mon! Give us some explosions and gun battles and boom-boom-pow!
And finally, for the 7 billion of us who don't think the US is the greatest country on the planet, a lot of the movie felt like a cheesy propaganda reel.