History Drags On

High on facts but low on energy
By
Morgan P Salvo

The Conspirator is a production by American Film History, a company designed and committed to portray factual history in movies. Sure enough, Robert Redford’s newest flick since Lions for Lambs seems to have all the facts straight, but delivers us such a deadpan and boring tale that by the end it’s hard to care. Conspirator rightfully belongs on the History Channel.
From the get go we see that director/icon Redford is detail oriented and infatuated with recreating the time period but to a fault, as in many cases the performances are off the mark. With such an interesting piece of overlooked history, this should have been a compelling flick loaded with angst and pathos, but as it stands it lacks tension. From the very first scene of intercutting the assassination attempt of Abraham Lincoln, the Vice President and Secretary of State with the inconsequential small talk that establishes most of the characters, the editing alone could have been pumped up for more excitement. We feel the urgency, even in thinking about the atrocities and depth of despair brought on by the Civil War, but Conspirator seems superficial and glossed over. The facts that unfold are monumental and comparable today to the political justice system and injustices at Guantanamo Bay, yet it feels like one long, slow march toward the inevitable.

The story is that seven men and one lone female, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) were charged as conspirators in the assassination trial of Lincoln. Surratt owned a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and the others met and hatched the plot of the simultaneous attacks, and it is up to her reluctant lawyer (James McAvoy), a Northern war hero, to uncover the truth and convince a military tribunal to spare her life.
This movie moves at a snail’s pace and is rarely interactive. We get a jury of officers with their minds made up and even though the courtroom scenes try to amp up the proceedings, the mix and match courtroom to prison gab fests feel mandatory and some unnecessary. The courtroom scenes are few and far between, containing the enthusiasm of a high school play. And with the exception of Stephen Root (who’s quickly becoming my favorite character actor) as the drunkard stable owner, the acting is just fair. McAvoy is all over the map with whatever he is trying to convey, looking lost and distracted. He seems to never focus except to get pissed off a couple of times. Robin Wright is really the only reason to watch this movie. Wright shines amidst the community theater posing.

And what’s the deal with Danny Huston? I checked, and he’s in more movies I’ve reviewed than any other actor. Just because he has a famous dad doesn’t mean he gets to be in every movie he wants. Let me let you in on a little secret… he’s not that good! He plays the prosecuting attorney/marshal and bloats himself up using that inherited John Huston gravel voice to some degree, but he’s still Danny Huston and should take a break. The guy who got to play Lincoln was robbed--- all we see is his mole cheek and beard.
Redford’s hell-bent on wowing us with the lighting techniques and his attention to recreating a Civil War era theme park, mars the storytelling. The camera angles are too disjointed and the editing seems to have been done by mail order.
Conspirator’s main aspect is McAvoy’s character’s Aiken’s moral dilemma. His legal career has taken a traumatic turn - after serving in the North he is forced into defending a Southerner. He then observes the travesty of manipulators in the legal system bending the rules and messing with the law in the name of “security”. Taking a stand for the law, human rights and an innocent a woman’s life, Aiken is then ostracized. The comparisons to politically motivated justice, the war machine and military industrial complex are clear, but in the end, all these lofty ideals get engulfed in period pieces, lack of tension and bad dialogue. History be dammed, this movie is boring!
Just like Mary Surratt’s predetermined fate, Redford seems to have designs on having us leave the theater with comparisons to present day legal atrocities, but I left questioning the time spent looking at the seat in front of me and wondering about its history and where it was made.

The Conspirator
Starring Robin Wright, James McAvoy, Evan Rachel Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline
Directed by Robert Redford
2 stars