Rating of
3/4
Oscar Bait
Gabe - wrote on 01/22/13
I agree with Alex in saying, this film is not about Lincoln, but, then again, it is. It's not a biographical piece. It doesn't start with his time in Illinois growing up and the Lincoln-Douglas debates, then his eventual election and untimely death. It's about politics. Specifically the politics of getting an amendment passed. Lincoln knew that the Emancipation Proclamation was only good during the Civil War. Once the war ended, the courts would overturn it. He needed the Amendment passes, and this film is the story of how that happened.
Other parts of the film are great, as stated in almost every review, Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, etc. are all great. The Cinematography by Janusz Kaminski is excellent as it is in almost every film that he and Spielberg work on. Of course Spielberg's direction is great, the make-up is good. Every thing about this film is well done, but, the pacing is slow, and quite frankly, I'm not a huge Sally Field fan. This film is one of the best films of the year, don't get me wrong, but, it's not the best. Unless your genre of choice is the "Men In To- Hats Sitting Around a Table Talking" genre, then this is the film for you.
Also, there is a lot of history to be learned by watching this. Even something as small as the fact that the play at the end is not at Ford's Theater. It doesn't claim be, in fact, the President isn't even there. His son was at a different play with a Secret Service agent on that same night. That was how Lincoln's boy found out about his father.
Cameo Alert: I couldn't help but notice David Costabile who played Managing Editor Thomas Klebanow from the Wire and Gale Boetticher from Breaking Bad as James Ashley and Jared Harris who played Lane Pryce in Mad Men and David Robert Jones in Fringe as Ulysses S. Grant in this film.
