91% Lincoln

All Critics (215) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (195) | Rotten (20)

It's the most remarkable movie Steven Spielberg has made in quite a spell, and one of the things that makes it remarkable is how it fulfills those expectations by simultaneously ignoring and transcending them.

Lincoln paints a powerful and compelling portrait of the man who has become an icon. We don't need to see more of his life to understand how rare a figure he was - this window is more than sufficient.

Lincoln offers proof of what magic can happen when an actor falls in love with his character. Because as great as Day-Lewis has been in his many parts, he has never seemed quite so smitten.

The film masterfully captures the dual dilemmas facing the president in the final months of his life: how to bring the war between the states to an end, and how to eradicate slavery, once and for all.

Lincoln is a stirring reminder that politics can be noble. Might there be a lesson here for today's shrill D.C. discourse? 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Day-Lewis' voice is thin and reedy, which jibes with historical accounts but subverts our expectations. His attitude makes listeners lean in, and so do we, magnetized by his kindly reserve.

Against the odds, Spielberg makes something genuinely exciting of the backstage wheedling.

A historic epic from Steven Spielberg carries a lot of baggage, but he surprises us with a remarkably contained approach to an iconic figure. What's most unexpected is that this is a political drama, not a biopic.

[Spielberg is] a man on a mission. And his not so secret weapon is Day-Lewis, an actor so charismatic it's hard to think clearly while he's on screen.

Perhaps this is a rose-tinted view of Lincoln - he comes across as more living saint than man - but as cinema, it is powerful, gripping and thoroughly entertaining.

Spielberg is always a professional, and the film is never less than well-crafted.

By stepping into history without fear, favour or any overfamiliar biopic folly, Lincoln, handsome, often thrilling, and movingly human, goes into history as a major movie achievement.

A rousing, rigorous and morally complex legal procedural more than a trad biopic. And all the better for it.

his is a warm, celebratory film, handsomely shot, with a subtle, sympathetic central performance from Day-Lewis, and tremendous support from Tommy Lee Jones ...

Spielberg's plodding camera endlessly tracks and circles Day-Lewis in complete reverence, while veteran composer John Williams delivers yet another repetitive Jurassic Extra-Terrestrial score.

What a feat from Day-Lewis: the nearest thing a 21st-century biopic can get to a seance.

It's tiresome to describe Day-Lewis as brilliant, so let's push the boat out: his Lincoln is absolutely wonderful.

A thoughtful and thought-proving picture.

Lincoln reminds you how little has actually changed in one-and-a-half centuries - presidents still have to worry about the war dead while trying to create a better life for the fractured living.

Impressively directed and superbly written, this is an absorbing and enjoyable political drama with an Oscar-worthy central performance from Daniel Day-Lewis.

Daniel Day-Lewis gives yet another performance for the ages in Steven Spielberg's admirably literate, thoroughly charming biopic.

Lincoln has been dismissed by some as merely 'people in rooms talking'. That may be true, but what people. And what talking.

Fans of great writing, superb acting, beautiful photography and the rousing scores of John Williams are going to lap this one up.

While Lincoln is high-minded and classy, it plays like a dry history lesson, despite a typically immaculate turn from Daniel Day-Lewis. In short, we have the definitive performance of Abraham Lincoln, but not the definitive movie.

'Lincoln' works as a snapshot of a great man without ever slipping into a portrait of sainthood.

This is the quietest of [Spielberg's] recent films, with an equally unobtrusive, delicately-crafted, totally absorbing performance from Daniel Day-Lewis.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/lincoln_2011/

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