Review of Killing Lincoln (2013) by Wesley W — 14 Nov 2013

Not that good of a portrayal of the Lincoln assassination in my opinion. The acting here isn't terrible but it just wasn't interesting to watch these unknown actors play these people. First off the actor playing John Wilkes Booth just had a weird voice but he did good on doing the stuff he did in the documentary.

The actor playing Abraham Lincoln wasn't memorable and it felt like he was going through the motions to get to his death in the film. Everybody else was forgettable as well. Before watching this I watched Steven Spielburg's Lincoln, that movie had top class acting, a very spot on portrayal of Abraham Lincoln, and had top notch directing.

When watching this after watching Lincoln, I can see very easily that the acting here was a major step down. I'm not comparing this entirely to Lincoln, I just thought that the documentary could have had better portrayals of characters.

Things I liked about the movie was Tom Hanks narrating it and towards the end it was very interesting to see what had happened to John Wilkes Booth after he had assassinated President Lincoln. Overall it wasn't a bad documentary, I just thought it could have been better than it was.

There is a TV movie called The Day Lincoln Was Shot, it was a film that is also over the Lincoln assassination. I found it to be a close to great film with a better portrayal of both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth and it has an emotional impact that I found to be absent throughout Killing Lincoln.