The Conspirator

I thought the statute of limitations had
run on my "Santa Barbara" days

Grade: C +

Director: Robert Redford

Starring: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Evan Rachel Wood, Alexis Bledel, Justin Long, Tom Wilkinson, Danny Huston, and Kevin Kline

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 3 min.

Not until about 20 minutes into The Conspirator do you realize why Robert Redford, a film legend and activist whose recent interests have skewed more political than cinematic, would direct a historical drama about the trial of one of the conspirators behind Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

The opening act is a well-crafted, authentic recounting of the conspiracy to simultaneously murder Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson, culminating with John Wilkes Booth gunning down Lincoln inside Ford’s Theatre. Redford’s impressive attention to detail, here and throughout the film, includes the wooden brace Booth used to jam the door leading to Lincoln’s theater box, the diagonal placement of Lincoln on the bed inside William Peterson’s boarding house because the president was too tall to lie straight, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline) ordering a hysterical Mary Lincoln out of the room housing her dying husband.

As Booth and his cohorts are rounded up, the government eventually beats a path to a D.C. boarding house run by Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) where the assassination plot was allegedly hatched. Under orders from Seward, Surratt is tried before a military tribunal where she is not allowed to testify in her own defense, and neither she nor her attorney, Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy), are privy to the prosecution’s evidence prior to trial.

It’s only when the storyline shifts focuses onto this Gitmo-style simulacrum, with Seward playing the part of a 19^th century mash-up of Cheney and Rumsfeld, that Redford’s motives become far clearer than those of his characters. Aiken, a former Union soldier, is cast as a war hero and idealist, but the only adversity he suffers for his unpopular defense of Surratt is excommunication from his gentleman’s club and the occasional anxiety of his fiancée (Alexis Bledel).

Meanwhile, we are left puzzling over Mary’s Mary’s relationship with her son John (Johnny Simmons) and daughter Anna (Evan Rachel Wood), both of whom seem strangely reluctant to come to their mother’s aid. Further, why does every Southern character speak with such a clichéd drawl –Tom Wilkinson’s senator from Maryland sounds as if he was voice-coached by Foghorn Leghorn.

As some evidence of Mary’s culpability gradually emerges, writer James Solomon waffles between defending Mary’s innocence and indicting the legal apparatus erected to prosecute her, the latter a more bloodless endeavor. Make no mistake: there is unfairness here that deserves contempt regardless of Mary’s guilt, such as the external influence exerted to assure a death sentence in lieu of life imprisonment.

However, Redford’s rendering is so captivated by its historical heft that it forgets to engage its audience in the figures at the center of its diorama. The trial and hanging of Mary Surratt is an important, nearly forgotten episode of American jurisprudence. The Conspirator, on the other hand, is more likely to have you scouring Wikipedia than IMDb.com.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at Indyweek.com: http://goo.gl/yqIFK

Post Grad

Meet-Cute on Aisle Four

Grade: D

Director: Vicky Jenson

Starring: Alexis Bledel, Zach Gilford, Rodrigo Santoro, Jane Lynch, Michael Keaton, and Carol Burnett

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

There was a time when the credits “Co-starring Michael Keaton and Carol Burnett” would be treated as a box office asset. Today, they are more likely to be emblazoned across the jewel box housing a direct-to-DVD release.

How Post Grad avoided such relegation is a mystery, as it is ultimately destined for the $5 discount bin at Wal-Mart. Aimless and immaterial, it is a film that defies description for the simple fact that it’s impossible to figure out what the heck this would-be coming-of-age comedy is about. That director Vicky Jenson’s professional background is primarily in animation is appropriate since the denizens in this piffle are like cartoon characters living in some make-believe fantasyland.

For example, take the recent college graduate with the only-in-a-movie name, Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel, channeling a poor mix of Emily Blunt and Ellen Page), who spends the entire film pining over her dream job at a publishing company (natch) only to quit the moment she lands it. Or Ryden’s BFF, Adam (Zach Gilford, talking as if his mouth has been pumped full of Novocain), who has worked hard through 16 years of school only to grapple over whether to even open his acceptance letter to Columbia Law School or instead live out his dream of playing guitar onstage in cruddy nightclubs.

Adam likes Ryden, who doesn’t really like him THAT way. Instead, she moves back in with her nutty family while hunting a job, waits for her Mr. Dad (Keaton) to fix her car, and makes goo-goo eyes at a Brazilian ad-man (Rodrigo Santoro) living next door until Adam gets ticked-off and moves away. Meanwhile, there is a wad of frayed plot strands, including dad’s (unresolved) brush with the law stemming from his side-business dealing stolen belt buckles. Ryden’s younger brother wants to build a soap box derby car and lick other kids’ heads, while Grandma (Burnett) wants to go coffin-shopping. And, Adam’s father (J.K. Simmons, utterly wasted) is either an absentee dad who doesn’t even bother to attend his son’s graduation or a hard-worker who puts food on the table and encourages Adam not to squander his educational opportunities.

Post Grad veers to and fro, not bothering to synthesize its already paper-thin subplots into a cohesive premise. Its main focus is the “tribulation” of a twenty-something recent college graduate with a strong family support system who finds herself temporarily without a job. In a recessionary economy, she’s what you call one of the lucky ones.

Neil Morris