‘The Conspirator’: solid, but not much fun


‘THE CONSPIRATOR’

Grade: C

Credits: directed by Robert Redford; cast

includes James McAvoy, Robin Wright (both above), Kevin Kline, Colm Meaney

Running time: 2:03

Rating: PG-13 for some violent content

Movie

The Conspirator

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In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, Vice President, and Secretary of State. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, 42, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth, 26, and others met and planned the simultaneous attacks. Newly-minted lawyer, Frederick Aiken, a 28-year-old Union war-hero, reluctantly agrees to defend Surratt before a military tribunal. Aiken realizes his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait and hostage in order to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a massive manhunt, her own son, John. As the nation turns against her, Surratt is forced to rely on Aiken to uncover the truth and save her life.

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History mystery: The Lincoln Conspiracy

By Colin Covert

Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

There’s nothing jarringly wrong with Robert Redford’s historical courtroom drama “The Conspirator,” nor is there much to get excited about.

The film, delving onto a little-known angle of the Lincoln assassination, is solid enough. Almost every role is acted more than capably. It asks worthy questions about military tribunals judging civilians, and a society that ballyhoos its freedoms but grows forgetful when they’re inconvenient.

Too bad it feels more like a homework assignment than an entertainment. You watch it impatiently waiting for the recess bell to ring.

The film is set mostly after John Wilkes Booth’s fatal shot in Ford’s Theater, as the nation demands swift justice. James McAvoy plays Union Army veteran Frederick Aiken, assigned to defend Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), a Southern sympathizer, owner of a D.C. boarding house and mother of suspected conspirator John Surratt. With Booth and Surratt fugitive, Mary was the easiest person to apprehend.

Aiken, still scarred by horrific memories of combat, goes through the standard reluctant-hero conversion, mounting a passionate defense as his doubts about her guilt and qualms about the military trial both grow.

The usual judicial rigmarole of unreliable witnesses, objections and rulings from the bench are complicated by military jurisprudence, designed to deliver a streamlined version of justice for combatants.

The usual rules of civilian courts don’t apply, and a sense of kangaroo court jurisprudence reigns.

McAvoy gives a sturdy performance as the conflicted lawyer.

He’s comfortable with archaic courtroom dialog, both technical and flowery.

He issues little smoke signals of misgiving that erupt into fiery outrage as the mock trial progresses.

Colm Meaney, the infuriating officer in charge of the trial, is in every way his opposite number, clipped of speech and chilly of demeanor.

Their verbal duels are engaging, a too brief respite from stagey scenes and declamatory speeches.

Wright is a one-note paragon of aggrieved dignity, Kevin Kline virtually hisses his lines as vengeful Secretary of War Henry Stanton, and the period interiors have the airless ambience of museum displays.

“The Conspirator” is a worthy historical re- enactment, but not much of a movie.

Eightscore and seven minutes feels ever so long.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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