The Devil Has Come To Tsavo

Some links before I get started today. Yesterday was Sunday, so we had a Snippet Sunday post at our joint blog. Cheryl had pics from an air show in her area. Parsnip had a video clip at her page and a look at a number of pics. Hilary has her birthday today. And the Whisk has a pair of troublemakers at her blog. Also, keep an eye on my photoblog by clicking at the right, as I've got Remembrance Day material for today and tomorrow.

Now then, today I have another movie review.

“I’m a monster. My only pleasure is in tormenting those who work for me.” ~ Robert Beaumont

“Darling, you know how God invented liquor so the Irish wouldn’t rule the world. Well I think he may have invented being stubborn so we can be the best at something.” ~ John Patterson

“Oh, you’re right. The devil has come to Tsavo. Look at me! I am the devil.” ~ Charles Remington

In 1898, a bridge construction over the river Tsavo in Africa was interrupted by a pair of lions, hunting and killing railway workers in the dozens, over a hundred by some counts. The lions were hunted down and killed by the project engineer, a British colonel named John Patterson, and their story has baffled people ever since. The man eaters can be found to this day in the Field Museum in Chicago, where they have been preserved and are on display. The story inspired screen writer William Goldman (The Princess Bride) to adapt it for the big screen, fictionalizing some aspects, but telling a story of murderous danger in the African high grasses, set against the backdrop of European colonial expansion at the end of the 19^th century. Director Stephen Hopkins (Blown Away) came on board to helm the film, a historical adventure in a changing Africa.

We meet Colonel Patterson (Val Kilmer), an Irishman in the British military with a reputation for doing good work as an engineer in challenging locations. He’s hired by Robert Beaumont (Tom Wilkinson), a tyrant of a financier, who’s trying to have a railroad built in Africa in order to win the race against other European colonial powers, to save Africa from the Africans, and secure his knighthood. Whichever is his priority is another matter, but Beaumont admits he’s a monster, and promises Patterson that he’ll hate him. Patterson is off to Africa after saying goodbye to his wife Helena (Emily Mortimer), who is expecting their first child.

Patterson’s quite happy to come to Africa, a place he’s dreamed of seeing, meeting his right hand man Angus Starling (Brian McCardie), the camp foreman Samuel (John Kani), and the doctor, David Hawthorne (Bernard Hill). There’s tension in the camp, between the local African workers and those who have come from India for the work. The two sides don’t like each other, Samuel explains, and the Indians don’t like other Indians- the religious differences between Muslim and Hindu rising to the surface. There’s also the problem of a lion attack before Patterson’s arrival. Patterson doesn't realize that the lions in the area will soon become a much bigger problem, in the form of two males that hunt together, seeming to kill just for the pleasure of killing. The workers take to calling them the Ghost and the Darkness.

Goldman’s script fictionalizes certain aspects of the story, including bringing in an American big game hunter, Charles Remington, played by Michael Douglas, who finally appears in a dramatic way halfway through the film. The story also ignores the fact that the lions of the Tsavo region tend to lack manes; in fact, the pair of lions still on display in Chicago have no manes. However, these are mere trifles. The story is one of suspense and dread, and for me, that’s how it’s always worked. It’s an action thriller that drives up the tension, because we don’t understand why these lions are behaving this way. More than one character points out that lions don’t act like this, they don’t kill just for the sport, and yet these lions do. The story makes us look at the long grass in a completely different way; when Patterson is first travelling and seeing wildlife, we’re struck by the beauty of the land, but we quickly start looking at those grasslands and ask ourselves what’s hiding in that long grass. It leaves the audience feeling a sense of dread; the film does for the African savanna what Jaws did for the ocean.

Goldman also allows for humour and characterization as he goes along. He frames the story with a narrator, using Samuel to recount the events. This is an unusual touch compared to what a film of fifty or sixty years ago might have gone with, as it features an African voice to tell the story, and Goldman gives his narrator depth. Characterization tends to show itself in smaller ways and in quiet moments, such as when we learn Remington’s sad past, or see Patterson’s longing to see his wife again play itself out in letters home. The film refrains from glossing over the racial issues, as tensions among the workers keep cropping up, one of them even acidly remarking to Patterson, “you’re white, you can do anything.” The humour on the other hand plays out in dialogue between characters, mostly at night around campfires, such as Samuel teasing Remington: “I don’t believe you had a mother.”

Hopkins has a good visual style for the story; his work on Blown Away with its themes of Irish terrorism and revenge showed that, and he handled the direction for this well, sometimes giving us the lion’s point of view in how a scene was shot, sometimes using the light of fires as the only lighting for a scene, giving it a more dangerous, uncertain quality. There’s a sequence where one of the lions gets caught in a trap where a group of handpicked riflemen are waiting; the way he films the sequence has a nightmarish feel where you can almost feel as if the lion’s a supernatural being; not one round hits the beast, and the roars of the animal are deafening.

Much of the filming was done on location in South Africa, and the film definitely has an African feel in the look of the terrain. Real lions were used in the filming, albeit ones that have worked with humans extensively and were trained. I recall a documentary on the filming, which showed that the attacks were filmed in three stages: first on sound stages with the lions just being lions, pouncing upon an invisible prey against a green screen. The camera movements of that shot were memorized by computer and replicated with a second shot featuring whichever victim might be falling next, and the third shot used the exterior footage, all blending together seamlessly. Almost everything we see are real lions, though with a couple of exceptions, and in fact the real lions themselves, from a zoo in Ontario, were not quite sure of themselves in the open, having had lived their lives among people instead of zebras and antelopes.

The score is by Jerry Goldsmith, and it’s my favourite personal work by him. It blends together Irish and English sounds with a rich African influence into a single score, making liberal use of choral voices. It’s a blend of adventurous themes and malevolent, dangerous motifs that just drive up the tension all that much more.

Tom Wilkinson is only in the film briefly, on a couple of occasions, and this was the first film I ever saw featuring him. He makes a huge impression though. His Beaumont is an arrogant man, totally contemptuous of those around him. He says he’s a monster, and he certainly proves it, treating the deaths of dozens of workers with disdain, not giving a damn about anything but his own ambitions. By contrast, Emily Mortimer, who turns up here and there mostly in letters (and a nightmare sequence) is a loving and supportive wife, eager to see her husband again, to present him with their first born, and proud of him. Their relationship seems grounded, and she’s secure enough in herself to let him go off on a trip he’s wanted to make his entire life.

Bernard Hill, who would go on to appear in Titanic as Captain Smith and The Lord Of The Rings films as Theoden, plays Hawthorne as a drunken hard edged cynic who sees the railway as a sham, but admits that no one else would hire him. Cynic though he might be, he still acts to protect and care for his patients. Brian McCardie plays Angus as an idealistic man, quite out of his element, but relentlessly cheerful. Aside from his practical work, he also thinks of himself as a missionary doing the good work of the Lord in Africa. He’s given to talking a lot, and informs Patterson and Samuel that he has taken on a great task even more difficult than the salvation of Africa: he will not rest until both of them are safely in the fold. 

John Kani is a South African actor and playwright, and he gets to play the pivotal role of Samuel, the only man in the camp that everyone trusts. He plays the role with conviction and gravity, so the audience can believe him as a foreman, and as a man who’s good at mediating disputes. There’s a great warmth to the performance, a character we get to like very much. Patterson certainly gets along with him right from the beginning, and we learn he’s been friends with Remington for years. We also learn more about the man himself- he has several wives (he doesn’t like any of them, mind you), and he admits that he’s afraid of lions. Fear or not, he still acts without hesitation in the face of danger.

Michael Douglas was one of the producers on the film, and took the fictional role of Remington for himself. He comes into the story in a big, sudden way in the midst of a lot of tension in a crowd, and certainly makes an impression. Remington, we learn, is a man who does not like hunting, a strange thing in a man who makes that his profession, and only does it because he happens to be good at it. He hunts all over the world, but never returns to America; it turns out he lost everything in the Civil War when his family died. He mourns that loss years later, but doesn’t go too much into it, so we’re left to wonder at the tragedy. He makes for a good mentor for Patterson, and the two get along well with each other. Douglas conveys all of these aspects of the character with gravity and depth. He also moves like a hunter, with precision, speed when needed, care and slowness when needed as well.

Kilmer is a good protagonist for the film, taking on the role of Patterson and playing it in what feels just the right way. He might be a military officer, but as an Irishman, he’s always going to be an outsider among English officers, and that attribute does come across. He’s hired, not accepted, by the English financier, and he knows it. Kilmer gives him the competent, efficient sensibility that you’d expect out of an engineer, mixing that with qualities of a devoted husband and a man happy to get out to a place he’s dreamed of for years. Patterson is a man who genuinely gets along with the people who work for him, a stark contrast to his employers, and he shows concern for the well being of those around him. He forms friendships with the locals, particularly Samuel, in a way that another British officer would never think of, so it’s a measure of his personal integrity and decent nature.

The Ghost And The Darkness is one of my personal favourite action thrillers, an adventure set in an Africa undergoing great change. It takes full advantage of the beautiful surroundings before driving the audience into a tense, uneasy state at the sign of long savanna grasses… and what beasts might lurk within. 

Someone Please Make Gore Verbiniski Stop

Links to see to before we get ourselves started today. Check out Norma's blog for her look at the Razzie awards. We've got ourselves another Snippet Sunday blog posted at the joint page. The Happy Whisk asks if this is true or false. You decide. Eve has an orchid blossoming.  And at The Real Maple Syrup Mob, we have a cat tutorial on how to attract rabbits. Now then, today it's time for a movie review... one that I'm glad I didn't see in the theatres. I picked it up last week on an express shelf in the library... and I was not impressed.

"People think you are dead. Better you stay that way." ~ Tonto

"Why are you talking to that horse? Why am I covered in dirt?" John Reid

"I buried you." ~ Tonto

Last summer, director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer reunited with Johnny Depp for the action-western-comedy The Lone Ranger. Depp came on board to play the unlikely role of Tonto, while the title character got handed over to the inexplicably named Armie Hammer. The end result was a mess filled with distracting continuity glitches, geographical errors, story plotholes, and more problems. It bombed in the theatres, and with good reason.

The story bounces around in time, starting off at a fair in the 1930s as a boy encounters an elderly Indian (Depp), a Comanche who identifies himself as Tonto and begins to tell him the story of how he and the Lone Ranger met. This takes us back in time to 1869, where lawyer John Reid (Hammer) is on a train into Texas. The same train is carrying two prisoners, a renegade Indian, the aforementioned Tonto, and an outlaw named Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) due to be hanged. The train comes under attack from some of Cavendish's gang out to rescue their boss, and Reid and Tonto first meet while dealing with the crisis. Tonto is jailed nonetheless, we briefly meet John's sister-in-law Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) and her son. She will, of course, become the requisite love interest. 

Reid's brother Dan (James Badge Dale) deputizes John as a ranger to go after Cavendish and his gang. Things go seriously wrong, and the posse are all shot down and killed by Cavendish and the others. All except for John, left for dead but recovered by the conveniently escaped from jail Comanche who seems to think the bird on his head is alive and that the brother he has saved (the wrong brother) is a spirit walker who can't be killed.  Thus the two unlikely partners must work together in a story that brings in a horse with an attitude, a corrupt Army officer (Barry Pepper), a businessman with delusions of grandeur (Tom Wilkinson), and a brothel madam with a rather unusual prosthetic leg (Helena Bonham Carter). And it's all tied together with a whole lot of silliness.

Gore Verbinski has something of an eclectic history as a director. One of his earliest films was the priceless black comedy Mousehunt, and he's best known for the Pirates of the Caribbean films (he really should have stopped after the first three). Of those films, his production partner has been Jerry Bruckheimer, who's made a career in movies and television of loud and occasionally obnoxiously boorish stories that feature lots of explosions and rock music underscore. The Lone Ranger is, in short, the hubris of both coming back to haunt them. The film was plagued with production problems and an over the top budget straight off. The story is from a trio of screenwriters, Justin Haythe, Ted Elliot, and Terry Rossio. What they craft is filled with errors. While the story seems to be set in Texas, it moves all over the map geographically, from Monument Valley to Promontory Point (all while dragging history through the mud). It gets numerous details wrong, to say the least (as if we could expect accuracy in a film like this). It doesn't even pay attention to its own continuity- there are plenty of mistakes, such as dirt on a body that's not there in the same way in the next frame- that make you wonder if anyone was paying attention during filming.

And the film doesn't help in that it jumps around in time, not only from decades later, but often in the course of the 1869 timeline where we're seeing something one moment that might only make sense later on. It's distracting, but not in a good way. It also doesn't help to have the kid hearing the story from the elderly Tonto- it's not a framing sequence; the narration interrupts with regularity, and I found myself disliking the kid. It's probably a good idea to refrain from using child actors to begin with; something about this kid struck me like fingernails on a blackboard. They could have dropped the narration element entirely, told the film in a linear fashion, and it wouldn't feel so grating.

Verbinski and Bruckheimer assembled a crew with this production that brings mixed results to the film. Makeup actually does its job. Tonto's entire look is rather striking, and apparently based on paintings of Native peoples (though the dead bird on his head is a bit much). And Fichtner in particular looks suitably hideous as the outlaw Cavendish; he looks like he's been out in the sun for too many years and has been beaten over the head with an ugly stick, so the makeup department went out of their way with giving him that look. This also applies to set design, which evokes the Old West in a great deal of the finer details (even if the crew can't keep track of how much dirt ought to be on a body from one moment to the next).

Much of the filming was done on location, so we've got beautiful western settings (including the obligatory Monument Valley scenes that are seen in every western), and the camera work captures that reasonably well. The special effects and set work for the climax of the film, featuring two trains on a runaway chase through the mountains, also work in making the sequence work (even though geographically the start off of the sequence does not mesh with the bulk of the scene). In fact, the train sequence late in the film actually helps the movie... but not enough to compensate for the other problems that tanked the film. One other member of the crew worth mentioning. Hans Zimmer composes the score, and as usual goes for bombastic and over the top in his signature style, though it works. This is one of those cases as so often happens with movies where the score is the best part of the movie. Zimmer even incorporates Rossini's William Tell Overture into the climactic sequence of the movie, weaving the familiar music with his own score.

The cast is generally made of actors who should have known better than to get themselves in on something like this. Most of them, however, are not to blame for the fiasco this film became (one glaring exception to that). William Fichtner has been playing various dirtbags, villains, and nefarious sorts down through the years as a character actor. He's nearly unrecognizable here, but his Cavendish is an addition to that resume of roles (though Robert Redford, the ghost of Paul Newman, and writer William Goldman would object to the insult to an iconic character with the similar sounding name). Tom Wilkinson is one of those outstanding actors who's often one of the more interesting elements in any film he makes. He's playing a seemingly considerate man named Latham Cole when we first meet him, but underneath all that is a greedy bastard out to get even richer than he already is. Barry Pepper's also one of those actors who tends to be interesting to watch, and seems to suit the part of a soldier well (he's played that before in another period uniform). However, a weakness of the script itself seems to suggest his corruption just happens, which must annoy the actor.

James Badge Dale doesn't last long in this film as the lawman Dan Reid, but is at least plausible as a lawman in the Old West. He looks comfortable in the saddle, and as an actor is slowly building a good resume of work, including 24, The Pacific, Iron Man 3, and The Conspirator. I would have rather preferred him in the lead as the title character. Ruth Wilson is an actress I was unfamiliar with before now, but she plays the requisite part of the damsel in distress reasonably well, with romantic history with two brothers, and a son with one of them. I'd like to see what she's capable of in a film that's better. And Helena Bonham Carter, one of my favourite actresses, must have wondered what she was thinking getting into this film as Red. The character is eccentric and tends to come across as more of a plot device than anything else, used by the screenwriters to fill a plothole. At least Carter has a well established track record and can move off and do other things. 

The two leads are a problem, admittedly. I'll start out with the lesser problem. Johnny Depp is essentially channeling Captain Jack Sparrow with a glazed over Native American in his portrayal as Tonto. The take Depp has on the character is that of a man who's probably out of his mind, a nutcase who's crazy for the sake of being crazy, just like his signature Pirates role. It seems to me like Verbinski and Bruckheimer wanted him to play the role from that eccentric point of view rather than just as a straight on not for laughs character. Or maybe Depp has gotten to like playing eccentricity over and over again. It doesn't suit the character, though, but it's not really Depp's fault so much as it is those behind the scenes- the writers, producer, and director, all wanting to take another shot at that Pirates mentality. Johnny, do us a favour: for your next role, play something that's not eccentric.

Ultimately, the biggest problem of the film, which casts a fatal wound on it, is the actor playing the title role. Armie Hammer (why the hell did this man not change his name?) brings no weight, no gravitas, no sense of presence to the character. Tonto remarks on more than one occasion that the wrong brother came back from the dead, and in that, he's right. Dale would have been a better actor in the role, but instead we get stuck with an actor who we can't take seriously. Hammer seems to be sleepwalking through half the movie, or maybe he's just naturally boring, or maybe he's a pretty lousy actor. I'm inclined to think it's the last of those three options. It's a performance that just scuttles the entire film. This should be an object lesson to producers and directors: don't cast this guy in your film.

The Lone Ranger failed in spectacular fashion at the box office. It is filled with endless errors and gaffes that just hamper the whole thing from the point of view of the historian. The story itself is grating and derivative and wanders all over the place. It's entrusted to a director who needs to step away from filmdom for awhile and come back with something that's not so over the top. And its producer will never take a hint and just go away. Add to that a cast of supporting actors who are largely wasted in place of the spectacle of an empty story, a lead actor who needs to play a character who's not eccentric, and another lead actor completely out of his depth... and you've got the recipe for a film disaster. If you happen to watch this film at some point, you might want to make a drinking game out of this. Every time you have to roll your eyes at something in the story that annoys you, everyone takes another gulp.

An Impossible Mission: Getting Tom Cruise To Not Be Tom Cruise

Some months ago, settling in for another film, I happened to see a trailer start up with footage of Moscow, followed promptly thereafter by an explosion at the Kremlin. What unfolded thereafter was, of course, flashes of the new Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, the latest of these preposterous films if you keep track of them as they go by. One thought that went through my mind by the end of the trailer was "Well, I guess I can't write a sub-plot about the Kremlin getting blown up in a future book now, can I?"

This is the fourth movie in the series to follow the larger then life exploits of Ethan Hunt, an operative in the IMF unit, an semi-autonomous division of the CIA. Hunt, of course, is played by Tom Cruise, who's desperate to revive his box office mojo and make himself look good in the process (the latter is more important to him, by the way). It seems having couch-jumping meltdowns and antagonizing your audience by pushing your odd beliefs tends to backfire in the long run.

 I said preposterous earlier in describing these films, and that's not really a bad thing. Of the four films, each has their positive points (I vastly prefer the second in the series, for a terrific villain and an outstanding leading lady). The films are dizzying action set pieces with their own unique style, directed by four different directors who have each made their mark on the franchise. The problem, in a manner of speaking, is the star.

The new film starts out with the assassination of an IMF operative (Josh Holloway, from the much missed Lost) and a rescue of Hunt (with a source) from a Russian prison. Superimposed against this is the aforementioned explosion at the Kremlin, an act blamed by the Russians on Hunt and his team. The IMF is officially disbanded, though the director (Tom Wilkinson in a much too brief appearance) gives Hunt orders to hunt down the true guilty party. He's paired with Jane Carter (Paula Patton), Benji Dunn (a returning Simon Pegg) and William Brandt (Jeremy Renner) to chase down the truth, a mission that will bring them across the world. Their quarry, as they learn, is one Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist), who plans to start a nuclear war.

The film runs along at breakneck speed, with multiple action sequences. The prison breakout in Russia and the explosion at the Kremlin kick things off, and the later scenes take place in Dubai and Mumbai (with some breathtaking sequences at the Burj Khalifa skyscraper) with the fate of the planet at stake. Director Bill Bird, who's primarily done animated work before, does exceptionally well managing the action, as unbelievable as it may seem at times. Among his cast, Nyqvist is a well cast villain, Pegg is funny as usual (he gets some of the best lines) and Renner shows us why he's a more interesting, compelling actor. This is the guy who made a strong impression in The Hurt Locker, and his cameo in Thor will lead into his appearance in next year's The Avengers. He comes across as gritty, not polished, the sort of agent who just wants to get on with the job, rather then flash a toothy grin and show off.

This, of course, brings us to what's wrong with the film, and as I've already indicated, it's the leading actor. Tom Cruise has, in the past been a big name. In more recent years, he's been overshadowed by his own eccentricities. In both instances, however, he's never shown the ability to step out of himself, to inhabit the role. Whatever film he appears in, the audience is constantly reminded there's Tom Cruise again. Other actors can wrap themselves up in their role, and you find yourself watching the character, not the actor. Cruise seems incapable of doing this, and his persona as a person becomes very, very distracting.

It doesn't help that every shot of him in this film seems catered to make him look good. It's as though he had to be consulted to make sure he'd be seen in the most positive way in each frame. In past Mission Impossible films, when his character has been hurt, even his cuts and bruises are rendered to look sexy. This is the mark of extreme vanity. And when you combine that kind of vanity and the fact that he's not a good actor, it detracts from the film.

I thought about a recent Cruise film that I also liked despite the presence of the leading man. In Valkyrie, though he took steps to look different (the eye patch was essential for that role), he still proved distracting, because he wasn't inhabiting the role. And to make things worse, he'd surrounded himself with an outstanding cast that outdid him at every turn. The same thing gets repeated here; Renner and Nyqvist are much better actors, and thus the limitations of Cruise become that more obvious.

What will the future hold for this franchise? I would think it's better for all said if Cruise finally gave up. He's been doing this character for fifteen years now, and his personal vanity grates on the nerves. Renner's Brandt points towards where the franchise might go. I found him a more interesting character. Bird did a satisfying job with the director's mantle, and I'd like to see more out of him in live action in the future.

Maybe Tom can try to revive other films in his resume. I've heard there's word of a follow up to Top Gun (I've never seen more then a few bits and pieces of that film, actually). And I wouldn't mind seeing a film called A Few Bad Men. Think of it as a mash-up with U.S. Marshals. The disgraced former marine colonel Jessup played by Jack Nicholson escapes from prison, kills that snot-nosed JAG lawyer (Mr. Cruise, of course) who ruined his life (in the first twenty minutes; we can't have too much of the murder victim, after all). He then goes on the run from a cranky marshal (Tommy Lee Jones) and his team.

"You can't handle the truth! Now give me my Oscar!"

Admit it. You'd love to see that film.

Justice, Vengeance, And Conspiracy

"You're my witness. Should I not expect you to tell me the truth?"

On April 14th, 1865, with the Civil War at its end, President Abraham Lincoln took his wife to the theatre. There, assassin John Wilkes Booth shot him in cold blood, the culminating act of what was meant to be a three pronged attack by he and his associates, decapitating the leadership of the Union in one fell swoop. What followed in the days afterward included a manhunt for the assassin and his confederates, mass arrests, and an appetite for vengeance in the North that would have long lasting consequences. The story has been told in many accounts by historians, including a recent update by James Swanson called Manhunt. It has also found its way into novels, and to both the small and big screen. In recent years, the cable movie The Day Lincoln Was Shot depicted the assassination and its fallout.

In the second of my what was I thinking when I missed this in the theatre reviews, I'm turning my attention today to The Conspirator, which made a quiet debut last year in theatres, and has moved to the home video market. The film, by director Robert Redford, tells an often overlooked part of the Lincoln assassination: the trial of the other accused in the conspiracy, particularly the story of the only woman to be tried in the case.

The movie opens two years earlier, introducing us to a young Union officer, Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), wounded on the field of battle. Then it proceeds to the conclusion of the war, with celebration in Washington. With the surrender of Lee and the certaintly that other Confederate forces in the field would soon follow, the Civil War is at an end, and after years of bloodshed and calamity, it seems that finally, a page has been turned.

Looking back at it, we all know better. Booth, the famed actor and sometimes Confederate operative, cannot accept the turn of events, and he gets an unexpected opportunity when he learns of the President's theatre plans. He launches a spur of the moment operation, assassinating Lincoln, while sending one of his men after the Vice President and two more to kill the Secretary of State.

The assassination sequence at the theatre is familiar to most people, and Redford gives it the gravity it requires. He does the same with the other two aspects of the conspiracy, where we see the failed attack against Secretary Seward and the failure to attack the Vice President. Aiken, in Washington, witnesses the removal of the President from the theatre to the home across the street where he died a few hours later. It's a moment that impresses upon the young lawyer. From there, of course, Secretary of War Stanton (Kevin Kline) takes control, launching a manhunt, doing whatever it takes to root out the conspirators, and the manhunt ends with the death of Booth.

Of course, the film's not about Booth, and it's not about Lincoln. Their ghosts do hover over the rest of the film, but the story is about Aiken himself, drawn into defending one of the accused in the conspiracy trial, Mary Surratt (Robin Wright). His mentor, a Senator named Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), asks him to take the case. He's a Southerner who stayed loyal, and he believes that Mary needs a Yankee attorney. Aiken is reluctant, understandably. He believes Mary is guilty, and she's not exactly helpful in her own defense. Her boarding house was a meeting place for Booth and his gang, even before the assassination plot. Her son John was one of Booths' closest confederates, and while he had no part in the assassination, the government is still looking for him.

Aiken finds himself drawn into the case. He prepares a defense, finding inconsistencies in the case, meeting Marys' daughter Anna, who's ostracized and isolated because of her family. He's bothered that a civilian is being tried before a military tribunal, rather then by the civilian courts. He believes that basic constitutional rights are being trampled. And he comes to see that the lead prosecutor, Joseph Holt (Danny Huston) is actively stacking the deck against him and his client, interfering with witnesses. He pleads with Mary to reveal where her son is, something that as a mother she cannot do. His personal life and reputation suffer because of the case. And he increasingly wonders about her guilt, or degree of guilt, or innocence, while pleading with the tribunal not to let themselves give in to revenge.

The film is, at its heart, a courtroom drama. It brings up troubling questions that remain relevant today, about justice versus revenge and the rights of everyone to a fair trial. The tribunal wasn't about justice. It was all about revenge. Redford directs from a script by James Solomon, based on years of research, and he brings gravity and weight to the film, which has a deliberate, methodical tone to it, and an enormous amount of attention to detail. From my own knowledge of the story, I didn't seen any liberties taken with history.

Painstaking efforts for accuracy was made during production, and it worked. From the architecture of buildings and sets to the small details of costuming, props, and even gas lighting, the film feels very much like it's drawn out of the mid-nineteenth century. 

The casting of the roles is well done. Kevin Kline as Stanton is an interesting choice; you have to look twice at him to recognize him, though the voice can't be mistaken. There are things he says that would seem familiar coming from Dick Cheney, including being willing to ignore the rights under the constitution if it means saving the country. Still, as much as Stanton might be seen as an antagonist, his actions are still understandable. In those hours and days after the assassination, the magnitude of the shock on the country was something that wasn't felt again until the Second World War. Stanton and Lincoln had been friends, and the War Secretary was convinced the conspiracy was far larger then it was. Stanton wasn't right, but he wasn't quite wrong either. Kline gives the character a tremendous presence and a decisiveness at a point in time where, in effect, Stanton was the entire federal government.

Tom Wilkinson is one of my favourite actors. He brings a lot to each role. In this, he brings tenacity, a certain scrappiness and cynicism, and depth to his role. And as Holt, Danny Huston comes across as overbearing, but it's entirely appropriate for the role. He should feel like a formidable opponent, and Huston has that kind of presence.

It's wise of Redford to have cast general unknowns as Lincoln and Booth. Both actors do look the part (particularly Toby Kebbell, who's got Booth's look and personality perfectly), but appear briefly at the beginning and in flashback. Bigger names would have distracted.

The two leads are well cast. Robin Wright gives her role as Mary Surratt a distinct dignity. She holds back from Aiken, evading his questions, leaving the audience to wonder about her guilt, to come to their own conclusions. Robin does look dressed down, so to speak, but gives Mary a strength and sympathy that we can connect to, regardless of our opinion on the Confederate cause. Fundamentally, she wants to protect her child. We can understand that. And the bond that develops between she and Aiken is one of mother and son, so that as the film progresses, Aiken sees her in an entirely different light.

James McAvoy is the driving force of the movie, the idealistic attorney who's seen war, who believes in the law and in justice. He pleads to the better angels of our nature, to quote the President, but it's a plea that goes unheard. He makes the effort to exonerate his client, fights for her, and is there with her through to the end. McAvoy, who's quickly building an impressive resume of films, gives Aiken an earnest, sincere depth.

Redford the director has become one of the great craftsmen of film. He has a fine talent for telling a story, for making the best use of his cast and crew, and he uses this film to shed light on an often overlooked aspect of that time, with questions that still haunts us to this day. The Conspirator is a powerful, compelling, and dramatic film that you should see.