Review The Conspirator | poetslandscape

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB () Roger Ebert (3 stars) Fr. Dennis (three stars)

IMDb Listing -

http://www.Imdb.Com/name/tt0968264/

CNS/USCCB Review -

Roger Ebert?S Review -

http://rogerebert.Suntimes.Com/apps/percentage.Dll/article?AID=/20110414/REVIEWS/110419988

The Conspirator (directed with the aid of the use of Robert Redford, screenplay by way of James Solomon, tale with the resource of James Solomon and Gregory Bernstein) is about the trial of Mary Surratt for her connection inside the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on the night time of April 14, 1865. Mary Surratt (executed in the movie by way of manner of Robin Wright) had operated a Washington D.C. Boarding house frequented with the aid of some of the conspirators in the months previous to the assassination.

The case is of relevance nowadays because it changed into done under the auspices of a army tribunal in location of civilian court docket in a charged ecosystem in which the general public was without a doubt taken aback with the aid of the horror of the crime. The crime concerned now not certainly the assassination of President Lincoln however a conspiracy to additionally assassinate then Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. That is, it was an attempt through using a band of Confederate sympathizers, led by means of Lincoln?S murderer John Wilkes Booth, to efficiently decapitate the U.S. Government clearly 5 days after the give up of General Robert E. Lee commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia signaling the very last defeat of the South inside the American Civil War after the fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond Virginia on April 1. As such, there has been moreover a perceived want at the a part of the U.S. Government to demonstrate to any would-be Confederate sympathizers that the warfare become honestly coming to an end and _any_ in addition resistance even in the shape of sabotage or in nowadays?S language, terrorism, grow to be futile.

Yet, to make the factor, Mary Surratt, arguably harmless, become positioned to death after a questionable trial with the aid of a navy tribunal and a last minute serving of a writ of habeas corpus to force her retrial in a civil court become cancelled via President Andrew Johnson through the authority that have been granted the President at a few stage within the Lincoln Presidency by way of the use of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1863.

The movie is well written, well directed, staged and acted and is typically devoted to the historic document.

Initially, Maryland Senator Reverdy Johnson (played by Tom Wilkinson) was retained for Mary Surratt's defense.  However due to various political machinations, he ended up having to recuse himself from the case and instead asked a younger lawyer and Union combat veteran Fredrick Aiken (played by James McAvoy) to take her case. Their primary opponent was U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (played by Kevin Kline) who most fervently argued that those arrested and held for the assassination of Lincoln and the attempted assassinations of Johnson and Seward be dealt with quickly and decisively "for the sake of the nation" and "the cause of [future] peace."

Many of the same issues and concerns are, of course, being raised today, with regards to the many Moslem extremists being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (and at "undisclosed locations" elsewhere throughout the world) in connection with the 9/11 terrorist attack and other possible/probable conspiracies.

Added to the mix of issues in the movie was Mary Sarrott’s Catholicism (an unpopular and mistrusted religion in the United States at the time) as well as strong suggestion that several Catholic priests were successfully hiding the whereabouts of Mary Sarrott’s son John Sarrott, Jr, who was arguably far more involved in the conspiracy to kill President Lincoln and the others than his mother was. Asked in the movie by Aiken why the priests would be protecting Mary Sarrott’s son, Mary’s Confessor replied "and expose him to this [farce of a proceeding] as well?"

Movies like this stand or fall on basis of their faithfulness to the historical record of the Mary Surratt case. As noted above, it seems to me that in this regard, Redford’s movie does very well, and leaves viewers with much to think about.

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