The Conspirator

One bullet killed the president. But not one man.

Shortly after the assassination of President Lincoln, 27-year-old war hero Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) agrees to defend Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) who owned the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth planned the attack. The story of the first woman ever to be executed in a federal case in the U.S. starts compellingly enough with the 1865 murder of Lincoln and attacks on the Vice President and the Secretary of State, but then loses its energy. Well cast and always engaging, the film shows how potentially destructive it was for Aiken to take the Surratt case, but too much of the story remains a familiar courtroom drama.

2011-U.S. 123 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Robert Redford. Cast: James McAvoy (Frederick Aiken), Robin Wright (Mary Surratt), Kevin Kline (Edwin Stanton), Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Huston, Justin Long… Tom Wilkinson, Alexis Bledel, Colm Meaney.