“The Conspirator” is the first film produced by the American Film Company. At the film’s premiere, held at Ford’s Theatre here in Washington with stars walking a makeshift red carpet, Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts said he founded the company because he wanted to see “grown-up” films about his country’s history that were as accurate as they were entertaining. To ensure fidelity to the historical record in this film about the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, producers hired historians to go over the script and inspect the visuals. They seem to have missed a few things — unless life back then was so black and white that every Union member was blindly hellbent on revenge and every Confederate citizen was ardently bound to principle.
Robert Redford goes behind the camera once again to direct “The Conspirator,” in theaters the very day Lincoln died 146 years ago. It opens the night before, with Union soldiers celebrating Lee’s surrender and Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln enjoying a night at the theater. Sinister figures lurk in the shadows around town; then they strike.
| ‘The Conspirator’ |
| 2.5 out of 5 stars |
| Stars: Robin Wright, James McAvoy |
| Director: Robert Redford |
| Rated: PG-13 for some violent content |
| Running time: 123 minutes |
There are three targets — but if you don’t know your history, you’ll only recognize one. Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward aren’t identified. In fact, there’s barely any context established in the first scenes. Then we get a pedantic series of newspaper headlines to bring us up to speed slightly. It’s not the only time the film seems a little like something produced for PBS.
“The Conspirator” is Mary Surratt, the only woman charged in Lincoln’s murder and the first woman executed by the federal government. She ran a boarding house that hosted meetings attended by John Wilkes Booth. Played by Robin Wright, Surratt’s a devout Catholic and a steadfast mother resigned to sacrificing herself for her son, who’s gone into hiding. She’s reluctantly defended by Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), a Union war hero with no interest in helping a rebel. But in trying to uncover evidence of her perfidy, he starts to believe she might be innocent after all.
It’s a well-worn earnest plot — one person fights for justice on behalf of someone downtrodden by the powers that be. McAvoy makes it watchable. The Scottish actor’s American accent is pitch-perfect, as is his nuanced portrayal of a young man who’s been through too much for his age and is just starting to make sense of it. It’s unfortunate that he has to utter some of the anachronisms — as when he responds to a question with “Uh-huh.”
The bigger problem is that the central character of Surratt, as pictured here, is completely unengaging. She’s simply put upon. It’s too bad the American Film Company didn’t include some of the other rascals of the time, like Boston Corbett, the man who ignored orders and shot Booth — and had years before castrated himself to avoid temptation. American history is a lot more interesting than seen here.
