Excellent, smart action film.

Absolutely Fantastic

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is a nice piece of work, but far from being ideal. It was clear the filmmakers had little funds so that they used the re-enactors to show the battle scenes, and the color scheme in those differs a lot. But that is OK. The film itself is a bit too long and bit too unrealistic. Gore Vidal was a writer and he did bring a lot of fiction onto real events. But despite all this, Watterson and Tyler did their main parts well and that counts as a big plus. In general, not bad, but still, much weaker than many other Civil War films of the era. The movie pays a decent tribute to the life and sufferings of a real great man, but it often tends to drag along or slow down painfully quite too often. Recommended but with some caution

Mary Tyler Moore gives the best portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln I have ever seen on screen.Sam Waterson gives a very different portrayal of President Lincoln than we are used to. Generally, when we think of Lincoln we think of a man with a deep voice due to the fact that he was a very tall man and was well built. However Lincoln in fact did not have a deep voice according to some reports that I have read, in fact he had a high pitched voice and he had that Kentucky accent. (Kentucky? The Hell you say, Lincoln was from Illinois, yes this is true, however Lincoln was born in Kentucky, he was raised mostly in Illinois though)This film gives us a good look at Lincoln the man, at the True Abraham Lincoln. Yes this film only spends a small amount of time on the assassination and spends none on the conspirators at all.If you want to see a very good portrayal of the Lincoln assassination that is very in depth, try watching "The Day Lincoln was Shot" which was a television movie made for TNT. In fact the "Day Lincoln was shot" is a nice accompanying piece to this movie. If you ever get the opportunity to watch either one of these films take it you won't regret it.

I must disagree strongly with the correspondant who describes this film as garbage. I believe the production team, the writer and the efforts of Waterston and Tyler Moore have brilliantly captured Vidals characterisation of Honest Abe, both as politician and as a family man. Vidals GENIUS is the bi-play between Lincoln and Seward and Lincoln and Chase but in a three hour film it would be quite impossible to portray these intense rivalries and do any justice at all to the quality of the book. Many characters from the book are missing and there is no play at all of the assassination plotters that threads through the book. Nevertheless the Lincoln that has been lifted from the page makes for a most enjoyable film and well worth a viewing

I really expected a better performance from Waterson. He looks too frazzled and the dialogue often rings false. Moore came across well as a woman losing it bit by bit.