Get Your First Look at Redford’s Lincoln Assassination Film The Conspirator

By Kevin Coll • April 28, 2010 • 2 Comments

The USA Today got a chance to talk to Robert Redford who is directing the first of a few Abraham Lincoln centered films to hit theater audiences soon. His film, The Conspirator, follows the turbulent backdrop of post-Civil War Washington with the film centered on the plot to assassinate then President of the US, Abraham Lincoln. The story revolves around Mary Surratt (Robin Wright Penn), one of the accused members of the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln, and in the wake of the case, the first woman executed by the US government. James McAvoy plays Frederick Aiken, a Union soldier who reluctantly defends Mary Surratt.

Redford spoke about the film a bit and had this to say on the plot:

“There was a question of whether she was complicit, guilty by association, or even more guilty. The lawyer that defended her didn’t want to defend her. He was a Union soldier who became a lawyer.”

In the photos below we see McAvoy’s character as well as Penn’s. The other character we see is Toby Kebbell’s John Wilkes Booth.

The Conspirator comes to theaters in 2010 and also stars Norman Reedus, Evan Rachel Wood, Alexis Bledel, Justin Long, Danny Huston, Kevin Kline. The film is directed by Robert Redford. In the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, Vice-President, and 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. 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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