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Created Oct 01, 2011 09:48AM PST • Edited Nov 15, 2016 08:19PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Pretty Bad 1.5

   Pity poor Robert Redford. His desperate attempt to discredit 21st century military tribunals led him to craft a tortured courtroom drama that paints Lincoln’s killers as sympathetic victims of a tyrannical US government. Politics aside, The Conspirator proves hard to follow, uninvolving and obsessed with legal machinations at the expense of common sense.

   A Few Good Men it ain’t. To wit, the trial’s crescendo comes when James McAvoy’s outgunned defense attorney shouts “The prosecution will stop at nothing,” hardly a “You can’t handle the truth” moment.

4. Acting

   OK 2.5

   James McAvoy disappoints as a Union hero who takes on a difficult legal case. He comes across as callow, though in fairness, the role isn’t written well.

   Robin Wright fares modestly better as Mary Surratt, the Conspirator of the title.

   The rest of the cast – including big names Kevin Kline and Tom Wilkinson – make little impact.

5. Male Stars OK 2.5

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Barely OK 2.0

10. Film

    Pretty Bad 1.5

    Redford’s film fails to make a tortured trial easy to follow, especially when the defense’s claims challenge common sense.

    The film is an OK period piece, though that becomes thin consolation as it grinds its political axe.

11. Direction Barely OK 2.0

12. Play Bad 1.0

13. Music Pretty Bad 1.5

14. Visuals OK 2.5

    The dust mottled lighting streaming in from every window proved more distracting than effective. BigDaddyDave describes it well in his review.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.4

17. Sex Innocent 1.0

18. Violence Fierce 1.8

19. Rudeness Polite 1.4

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    If Redford wanted to pick on Civil War era civil rights abuses, perhaps he should have chosen Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus. In any case, politics makes strange bedfellows, what with a Lefty director making a movie that lionizes a slavery-supporting woman who ran a hothouse of Confederate treachery.

    If the killers of our greatest President – the man who ended African-American slavery and saved the Union – aren’t deserving of full-throated condemnation, who is?

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.4

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0