Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
April 14, 1865. One gunshot. One assassin hell-bent on killing a tyrant, as he charged the 16th President of the United States. And in one moment, our nation was forever changed. This is the most dramatic and resonant crime in American history—the true story of the killing of Abraham Lincoln.
Killing Lincoln is a competent but unremarkable docudrama adaptation of Bill O'Reilly's bestseller, narrated by Tom Hanks. The plot covers well-trodden historical ground with reasonable clarity but adds little new insight to Lincoln scholarship. The acting from the dramatic reconstructions is middling at best, with performances feeling stiff and televisual. Cinematography is functional for a TV movie standard but lacks any visual ambition. Novelty is low—the Lincoln assassination has been covered extensively in documentaries and films, and this entry follows a fairly conventional docudrama format without a distinctive voice. The ending, covering the manhunt and capture of Booth, provides adequate closure to the narrative arc.