Lincoln (2012)

Lincoln is a very well crafted film. It is Steven Spielberg filmmaking at his best. Even though the film crept along at a snail’s pace, and felt longer than the 2 ½ hours running time, it was definitely worth seeing.

Begin the movie with expectations that it will be slow and long and you will be pleasantly surprised by the Oscar worthy performance of Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln and his supporting cast of what seemed like an endless number of major character actors such as Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Hal Holbrook, Jackie Earl Haley, John Hawkes, Bruce McGill, Tim Blake Nelson, Jared Harris, etc., etc., and then some. You probably do not recognize half of those names listed, but you will definitely recognize their faces when you see them in the film. Every couple of scenes, I was surprised to see another familiar face of a very likable character actor.

Because so many people hopped aboard the Steven Spielberg train that is Lincoln, I think that the only ones that could win any awards for their performances would be Daniel Day-Lewis, Steven Spielberg himself, or maybe Tommy Lee Jones.

There did not seem to be a whole lot of character development for any one supporting character and I believe this is because there were almost too many characters to try to develop.

Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Lincoln was amazing. He was the spitting image of Lincoln. Bravo to the makeup crew. It must have taken a couple of hours to make him look like Lincoln every day. If I didn’t know that it was Daniel Day-Lewis acting as Lincoln and you showed me footage from the film, I would have believed it was actually Lincoln.

These days, it is risky to make a film like Lincoln.  But without risk there is no reward, and in this case maybe a few awards.

I rate Lincoln an 8 on a scale of 1-10.

Buy, rent, or run?  Buy.