Movie Critique
Pervez Punjani
PD = 7
US HISTORY MOVIE CRITIQUE
The Conspirator opens with a brutal night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. In the aftermath, eight conspirators are charged with plotting to murder the President, Vice-President, and Secretary of State. The lone woman among them, Mary Surratt owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices met to plan the attacks. Her son, John Surratt, was also allegedly part of the conspiracy, though he vanished after the killings. A Union war hero and lawyer, Frederic Aiken, agrees to defend Mary when her Southern attorney convinces him she needs a Northern soldier on her side for a fair trail, since she’s a civilian being tried by a military tribunal. Like most Lincoln supporters Aiken is sure Mary’s guilty and believes helping her betrays his country. He smirks with hatred and distrust when she denies being an assassin during their first jail cell interview. Yet his compassion and sense of justice gets the better of him as he soon realizes the military tribunal and its prosecutor Holt, decided Mary’s fate long before the trial began and will do whatever it takes to make sure they get the outcome they demand. Aiken does his best to raise enough reasonable doubt to convince half of the tribunal of Mary’s innocence; but due to the influence of Stanton on this case, Mary Surratt was proven guilty and hanged.
Although much of the details around the trial were drawn from actual historical accounts, some minor inaccuracies were presented in the movie. In the movie while Mary Surratt was in jail during the trial, her daughter Anna Surratt was isolated and kept in the Surratt boarding house with a lone guard outside, but in fact Anna Surratt was kept at the Old Capitol Prison until May 11 when she was finally released. She did not go back to the boarding house; instead she went to stay with friends. Also in the movie John Wilkes Booth went immediately inside the theater & killed President Lincoln, but in
PD = 7
US HISTORY MOVIE CRITIQUE
The Conspirator opens with a brutal night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. In the aftermath, eight conspirators are charged with plotting to murder the President, Vice-President, and Secretary of State. The lone woman among them, Mary Surratt owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and his accomplices met to plan the attacks. Her son, John Surratt, was also allegedly part of the conspiracy, though he vanished after the killings. A Union war hero and lawyer, Frederic Aiken, agrees to defend Mary when her Southern attorney convinces him she needs a Northern soldier on her side for a fair trail, since she’s a civilian being tried by a military tribunal. Like most Lincoln supporters Aiken is sure Mary’s guilty and believes helping her betrays his country. He smirks with hatred and distrust when she denies being an assassin during their first jail cell interview. Yet his compassion and sense of justice gets the better of him as he soon realizes the military tribunal and its prosecutor Holt, decided Mary’s fate long before the trial began and will do whatever it takes to make sure they get the outcome they demand. Aiken does his best to raise enough reasonable doubt to convince half of the tribunal of Mary’s innocence; but due to the influence of Stanton on this case, Mary Surratt was proven guilty and hanged.
Although much of the details around the trial were drawn from actual historical accounts, some minor inaccuracies were presented in the movie. In the movie while Mary Surratt was in jail during the trial, her daughter Anna Surratt was isolated and kept in the Surratt boarding house with a lone guard outside, but in fact Anna Surratt was kept at the Old Capitol Prison until May 11 when she was finally released. She did not go back to the boarding house; instead she went to stay with friends. Also in the movie John Wilkes Booth went immediately inside the theater & killed President Lincoln, but in