Lincoln

Let's be honest:  What red-blooded American wouldn't like a Lincoln/ Speilberg combo?  Even if one half starts to drag, the other half can pick up the ball and run with it.

Based (?) on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, the short period of January to April 1865 is the setting for this historical story.  The political struggle to pass the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery is mixed with the desire/other political struggle to end the Civil War. The amendment has passed in the Senate but must pass the House.  Every vote counts.

Watching this history lesson with the soliloquies and speeches and story worthy of Shakespeare and Daniel Day-Lewis, it become hard to separate fact from fiction.  Did these people really exist?:   James Spader as the sleazy operative, Tommy Lee Jones as the noble lawman, Sally Field as the long-suffering wife, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the son forced to grow up and Tim Blake Nelson as the goofy sidekick.  As the old saying goes, if they didn't, we'd have to invent them.

The answer is that it doesn't matter.  The Speilberg magic keeps the movie moving along.  For that, I'm glad because it makes a gripping story out of something that we all already know how it ends.  We are Americans after all.