A profile of Robert Redford’s upcoming Civil War-set, legal drama “The Conspirator” in USA Today has unveiled a handful of new images of the pic’s star-studded cast.
The film follows the hunt of a group of Confederate sympathizers reportedly responsible for the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln and centers on a decorated Union soldier, played by James McAvoy, who reluctantly defends one of the accused, a boarding-house owner Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), whose son was the sole conspirator to escape the manhunt.
“He barely survived the war,” Redford explains of McAvoy’s character, Frederick Aiken. “He was very heroic and won medals for bravery in the field, and comes back and wants to go back into law, and right away he’s pulled into this case because no one else will defend this woman.”
Aiken’s efforts are motivated by his belief that the trial and incarceration of Surratt is nothing more than an effort to bring her fugitive son out of hiding, with things further complicated by Aiken’s fiancee (Alexis Bledel) and her resentment of his defense of a Confederate sympathizer.
Despite the film’s plot centering on Lincoln’s assassination by John Wilkes Booth (Toby Kebbel), Redford reveals that the murder is shown only through quick, impressionistic images, and views “the whole beginning of the film as a vortex of images and the key facts you need to know.” Possibly something along the lines of the “Watchmen” opening scene?
The director goes on the compare the film to the 1976 film “All the President’s Men”, in which he starred, that he says is “very similar, because you had this big historical event taking place, but what people didn’t know was what these two reporters did, digging in under the radar.”
To this day, controversy still surrounds the Surratt case which was oddly tried in a military commission instead of a civilian court. However, the intention is for the film not to display bias for one side or the other, with Redford noting that he doesn’t want to “hit that too hard because then it sounds like agit-propaganda,” instead deciding to leave it up to the audience, to “show them something and let them decide.”
“The Conspirator” also co-stars the likes of Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Huston, Justin Long, Johnny Simmons, James Badge Dale and Stephen Root and is still without a distributor. Redford is currently finishing the film off in London, after a slight delay caused by the Icelandic volcanoes.
