Robert Redford Tells the Wrong Story in 'The Conspirator'

There are a whole lot of Lincoln movies coming out in the next couple of years—from Steven Spielberg's Team of Rivals adaptation to the intriguing sounding Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter—but the Abe-a-thon gets off to a weak start with Robert Redford's The Conspirator. It’s probably the most bored I've been at the movies this year.

I didn't think it was possible to make a boring movie about a presidential assassination, but The Conspirator manages the task.

The film wants to be an historical epic with themes relevant to the present day, but in reality, it’s an overly talky snooze with a political agenda that's admirable but ultimately about as subtle as a gunshot to the head.

The film tells the story of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), who owned a boarding house in Washington that housed John Wilkes Booth and several others who conspired in the Lincoln assassination.

A 19th-century Ethel Rosenberg figure, Surratt is tried for the assassination (along with several co-conspirators) in a military tribunal in which she's given an extremely unfair trial.

It's up to the young Union war hero-turned-lawyer Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) to defend her in court, possibly putting his promising political future in jeopardy.

Sure, there's the problem that the story is told in a deadly dull manner, and that for some reason Aiken is the protagonist when it should be Surratt.

The question I kept asking, though, is "Why this story?"

There are many fascinating stories about the Lincoln assassination, from the hunt for Booth to the mechanics of the conspiracy itself, both of which have been the subjects of whole books in the last few years.

Why make a movie about the not particularly noteworthy Surratt trial? The answer, of course, is that Redford clearly wanted to draw a parallel between her trial and the modern-day system of military tribunals used at Guantanamo Bay against al-Qaeda detainees. Yes, we get that, and the movie isn't exactly subtle about it. Edward Stanton (Kevin Kline), the movie's villain, might as well be wearing a nametag that says "Dick Cheney."

So, once that connection is made, what are we left with? An uninteresting trial with uninteresting characters.

I've enjoyed McAvoy in quite a few movies, but he's absolutely not right for this role and sounds ridiculous giving Jimmy Stewart-like heartfelt speeches. As for Wright, whatever she meant to do with this character, she seems to have kept it to herself. She plays Surratt as almost a nonentity. (The film is agnostic, by the way, on whether or not she was guilty.)

Some very good actors have smaller parts—Kline, Tom Wilkinson, Evan Rachel Wood—and do fine, but Alexis Bledel shows up in a painfully clichéd role as McAvoy's girlfriend, while Justin Long is one of those actors who just looks out of place in a 19th century movie. As for the guy playing the assassin (Toby Kebbell), he looks a lot more like Borat than John Wilkes Booth.

Redford's film has got the truth on its side a lot more than Oliver Stone's "JFK" did 20 years ago, but that's about it—that film, the historical hooey, was at least brilliantly made and entertaining. The Conspirator is neither.

No, it's not as bad as Redford's last film as director, the execrable 2007 Lions For Lambs, in which all of the dialogue sounded like it was lifted from years-old CNN Crossfire transcripts. But The Conspirator is another indication that Redford, who directed 1994's great Quiz Show, might want to stay clear of political stuff for a while.

The Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford and starring James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Kevin Kline and Justin Long. Rated PG-13; 2 hours, 2 minutes.

The Conspirator is now playing at:

Ritz East, 204 Walnut St., Philadelphia.