We’ve seen one official production still from TIFF and here’s a multitude of new photos from Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator.”
The picture is a Civil War-era drama starring James McAvoy and Robin Wright plus a superb supporting cast that includes Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Alexis Bledel, Justin Long, Toby Kebbell (as John Wilkes Booth), Danny Huston, Johnny Simmons, Colm Meaney and Stephen Root. We already showed you some set photos earlier this year, and revealed some more unofficial production stills and reviewed the script too.
We noticed allegorical post-9/11 allusions in the script (they’re fairly palpable, let’s face it) and according to the L.A. Times who has already seen the film, those analogies are intact onscreen which is good to hear.
You can read the extended synopsis here, but we can tell you that it’s a period drama (obviously) based on true events following the assassination of President Lincoln and centers on the story of Mary Surratt, an alleged accomplice and conspirator of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth.
Robin Wright plays Surratt, the lone female charged as a co-conspirator, who, when the nation turns against her, is forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer (James McAvoy) to uncover the truth and save her life. Evan Rachel Wood plays Surratt’s daughter, Tom Wilkinson plays a former attorney general who, as U.S. Senator, is McAvoy’s mentor, and Kevin Kline and Danny Huston play Lincoln’s Secretary of War and the prosecuting attorney respectively (in smaller roles, Bledel plays McAvoy’s fiancee and Long plays an injured Civil War friend). It’s strange to think that right now, this film has no U.S. distribution, but that could change pretty quickly (then again, you’d think it would have been snatched up by now). Either way, there’s a great and lengthy article in the L.A. Times about Redford taking the film to TIFF independently (there’s also one in the NYTimes, so perhaps Redford’s chances are very good as the media is certainly rooting for him).
The film makes its its world premiere tomorrow (ironically, September 11) at the Toronto International Film Festival. More photos of the cast including Long, Kline, Bledel and more after the jump.
