Dir. Robert Redford, USA, 2010, 123 mins
Cast: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Kevin Kline
Review by Carol Allen
There can be few people who don’t know the story of how President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by an actor called John Wilkes Booth. Less known however is that fact that the assassination was part of a wider conspiracy by idealistic young Southerners, recently defeated in the civil war, to bring down the newly created federal government under whose Yankee heel they felt they were about to be crushed.
After the assassination seven men and one woman are arrested. The woman, Mary Surratt (Wright), is the mother of one of the young men involved, John Surrattt, (Johnny Simmons), who has escaped. She is the keeper of a boarding house, where, it is claimed, members of the conspiracy, including Booth, met and hatched their plot. Secretary of War John Stanton (Kline), claiming the conspiracy is an act of war, determines on the quick trial and execution of the defendants by military tribunal rather than allowing trial by a jury of their peers. Frederick Aiken (McAvoy), a young war hero who fought for the North and is now starting his career as a lawyer, is persuaded by his mentor, Southern senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson), to defend Mary. Reluctant at first, as he believes in the climate of hysteria generated by the assassination that Mary along with the others is guilty as sin, Aiken comes to realise that the case against Mary is made up of the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, which would never stand up in a proper court of law and the trial is frankly rigged and a foregone conclusion. He is though fighting a different type of conspiracy involving Stanton, the head of the tribunal (Colm Meaney) and the counsel for the prosecution (Danny Huston), who are determined on the execution of Mary in the absence of her son in what they see as the defence of the still fragile federation
It is a very good, engrossing story with some first class performances. McAvoy is strong in the lead and Wright touching and dignified as Mary. The surrogate mother and son relationship which develops between them is interesting. Kline is almost uncrecognisable as the ruthlessly determined Stanton and there’s an affecting performance from Rachel Wood as Mary’s daughter, held in virtual house arrest in the now deserted boarding house.
Surprisingly for a director of Redford’s experience, the story telling isn’t as clear and sharp as one would expect. Writer James D. Solomon, a former journalist, has researched his first film screenplay very thoroughly but hasn’t always arranged the steps of the story in the most effective dramatic order. Some of the scenes too are none too clearly shot from a narrative point of view, such as the demise of Booth himself (Toby Kebbell) and the editing is a bit clunky in places.
What holds the film together though is those performances, which are excellent throughout, and the strength of the story itself with its implications for today, in a world where terrorist suspects can be held for months or even years without trial due to the hysteria generated by fear and the so called “war against terrorism”.
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