Review – The Conspirator

With an actor at the helm, this picture naturally enough turns out to be an actor’s movie. Sadly, that also means it isn’t a writer’s movie, a cinematographer’s movie, an editor’s movie, a historian’s movie or even much of an audience’s movie. The story at hand is the semi-sad tale of Mary Surratt, convicted on scanty evidence and executed for participating in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Or to be more precise, it’s the tale of Frederick Aiken, the up-and-coming lawyer who gets stuck trying to defend her. Robert Redford ends up producing a picture largely about the evils of using military tribunals to try civilians, a lesson that seems more apt for Guantanamo Bay in the 21st century than the United States in the 19th. He banks a lot on Robin Wright’s ability to make the traitor Surratt sympathetic, a task at which she largely fails. See if desperate