The Conspirator (2010)

Mary Surratt is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turns against her, she is forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.

Director:

Robert Redford

Writers:

James D. Solomon (as James Solomon), James D. Solomon (story) (as James Solomon)

Stars:

Robin Wright, James McAvoy, Tom Wilkinson

2 wins & 3 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
James McAvoy	...	Frederick Aiken
Robin Wright	...	Mary Surratt
Kevin Kline	...	Edwin Stanton
Evan Rachel Wood	...	Anna Surratt
Tom Wilkinson	...	Reverdy Johnson
Justin Long	...	Nicholas Baker
Danny Huston	...	Joseph Holt
James Badge Dale	...	William Hamilton
Colm Meaney	...	General Hunter
Alexis Bledel	...	Sarah Weston
Johnny Simmons	...	John Surratt
Toby Kebbell	...	John Wilkes Booth
Jonathan Groff	...	Louis Weichmann
Stephen Root	...	John Lloyd
John Cullum	...	Justice Wylie

Storyline

In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, the Vice-President, and the Secretary of State. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, 42, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and others met and planned the simultaneous attacks. Against the ominous back-drop of post-Civil War Washington, newly-minted lawyer, Frederick Aiken, a 28-year-old Union war-hero, reluctantly agrees to defend Surratt before a military tribunal. As the trial unfolds, Aiken realizes his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait and hostage in order to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a massive manhunt, her own son.

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Plot Keywords:

abraham lincoln character | john wilkes booth character | mary todd lincoln character | u.s. civil war | assassination | 

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Taglines:

One bullet killed the President. But not one man.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | History

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for some violent content

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [Japan]

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

15 April 2011 (USA)

Also Known As:

El conspirador

Filming Locations:

Espy House, 421 Abercorn Street, Savannah, Georgia, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$25,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$3,509,048, 17 April 2011, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$11,538,204, 11 September 2011

Company Credits

Production Co:

The American Film Company,Wildwood Enterprises

Technical Specs

Runtime:

122 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Toby Kebbell plays John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. He previously played Pausanias, who assassinated Philip II of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great) in Alexander (2004).

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Goofs

When Aiken first meets Mary Surratt, she asks him how old he is, and he says he is 27. Aiken was born in September 1832, which would make him 33 at the time of Lincoln's death.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Frederick Aiken: Two men standing at the Pearly Gates. The first man says, "How'd you die?" Second says, "I froze to death. How 'bout you?" And the, uh, second man says, "Well, I thought my... my wife was being unfaithful to me, so I ran all the way home. And burst into the bedroom. She just..."

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Connections

Featured in Maltin on Movies: The Conspirator (2011)

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Soundtracks

Empty
Performed by Ray LaMontagne
Courtesy of the RCA Records Label
By Arrangement with Sony Music Licensing

User Reviews

Presents its message in a clear and powerful way

Robert Redford's The Conspirator dramatizes the military trial of Mary Suratt, a boarding house owner accused of harboring conspirators and being involved in the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. It is a strong, if somewhat obvious, drama that depicts the mood of hysteria that followed the assassination, and suggests its relevance to today's politics. Written by James Solomon who spent fourteen years researching the story, the film opens with a brief introduction showing the agony of combat troops in the Civil War, then focuses on the assassination of the President on April 14, 1865 by actor John Wilkes Booth (Toby Kebbell), a Southern partisan and his companions Lewis Payne (Norman Reedus), David Herold (Marcus Hester), and Samuel Arnold (Jeremy Tuttle) at the Ford Theatre in Washington, D.C..

Stealthily entering the President's box, Booth shoots Lincoln in the head, then leaps onto the stage shouting "sic semper tyrannis" (thus always to tyrants), and escapes on horseback. The assassination results in an outpouring of grief all over the country, and prompts the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline) to vow revenge against the conspirators. After a two week search, Booth is found hiding in a nearby barn and shot to death, while seven suspected co-conspirators are arrested including Mary Suratt. Suratt is tried by a military tribunal where the rules state that only a majority vote is required for a guilty verdict and a two-thirds vote is needed to sentence a defendant to death. It is a court where a defendant is prohibited from testifying in their own defense.

Senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) from Virginia and a former U. S. Attorney General agrees to defend Suratt on the grounds that she is innocent until proved guilty. The Senator, however, withdraws because he fears that being a Southerner might prejudice his case, and asks Frederick Aiken (James McEvoy), a northern attorney to defend her. Initially reluctant and dubious about her story, Aiken resolves to prove her innocence after seeing that the defendant was up against an overbearing prosecutor (Danny Huston), a biased head of the tribunal (Colm Meany), and the behind-the-scenes antagonism of Secretary Stanton.

At great cost to his personal life, Aiken tries to prove that Ms. Suratt knew the boarders who lived in her house, but was not involved in their conspiracy. As the case progresses, it becomes apparent that only her son John (Johnny Simmons), a known conspirator who fled to Canada, can save his mother by surrendering. While there is limited dimension to the characters, The Conspirator is true to the historical record and the film presents its message in a clear and powerful way. Redford, long a champion of civil liberties, implicitly reminds us that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expressly guarantees that "no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law" and provides no exception for war.

It is not only an important message for those unfamiliar with our nation's history, but is strikingly relevant to the present day in which hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo still languish in prison without trial, where a U.S. citizen, suspected of terrorist activities, is targeted for an assassination attempt without having been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime, and where the ideal of due process and the presumption of innocence is slowly being replaced by unlimited violence, the repudiation of legality, and the undermining of democracy.