Lincoln2012

78/100 Comparing this to Abraham Lincoln is a futile exercise, both because they are two different beasts: one a grounded view of history, and another an action flick, and also because obviously the movie with vampire-hunting is better. In all seriousness, however, Spielberg's film about Lincoln manages to hold its own as an incredible historical piece. This is no historical epic here, but the lack of glorification only serves to make the film feel real. The story helps the film avoid being boring for most of the runtime as well, excellently telling the story of the Thirteenth Amendment's passing and the end of slavery for the most part. The cast is also great as ever. Daniel Day-Lewis does an excellent job as Lincoln himself, and Tommy Lee Jones as Thaddeus Stevens was a nice touch. If there's just one problem with the movie, it's that it goes on a bit too long. There are multiple scenes which I feel could've been cut, and in the middle, the movie started to drag for me. It manages to pick up the pace, but the pacing problems come back in near the end. I think half an hour could be cut from this movie without much damage aside from maybe a few side characters being fleshed out. Overall, this movie isn't really the fun kind, but it's obviously not meant to be, and it gets the job done as a good historical film. I feel it shows an interesting views of both the great traits and flaws of the real historical figure to deliver an intriguing movie, and a very good one.