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The Conspirator (DVD)
Year: 2010
Rating: M
Director: Robert Redford
Cast: Alexis Bledel, James McAvoy, Robin Wright Penn, Evan Rachel Wood
Release Date: December 08, 2011
Distributor: Reel
The Film: 3.5
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5"...this is obviously intended as a movie about right now."
Director/producer Robert Redford's latest effort behind the camera is a study of the fallout in the wake of the supposed original American conspiracy - that against President Abraham Lincoln, his Vice President and Secretary of State back in 1865 - and can certainly be enjoyed as a straight courtroom drama, although in old leftie Redford's hands, it's also a film very much about contemporary issues and fears, especially the perversion of the US Patriot Act and the US' perpetual need for revenge.
Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth and an enraged population (still laid low by the Civil War), spurred on by a media still learning to sensationalise, bay for the blood of the seven men and one woman, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), charged with being in on the apparent plot. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline) gives the unenviable job of her defence to showboating attorney Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), who then passes it on to 28-year-old Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), an ambitious former war hero, who becomes convinced that Mary genuinely did not, in fact, realise that her boarding house was being used as headquarters for the killers, and as his attempts to prove her innocence become more passionate (and convincing) the powers-that-be increasingly exercise their on-high influence to ensure that, no matter what, she's properly punished and scapegoated.
Drawn from a script by James Solomon based upon years of painstaking research, this certainly has its theoretical and talky elements, and yet Redford's striking evocation of the period and strong handling of the prestige cast, especially McAvoy, an effectively against-type Kline and a movingly sad Wright, as well as Colm Meaney, Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood and Alexis Bledel, are impressive indeed. And make no mistake: despite the top hats and stiff collars, this is obviously intended as a movie about right now.
