The Conspirator

The Conspirator (2011) is Robert Redford's historical courtroom drama, which you can watch online on iFILM. Washington has just come out of civil war when the president is shot dead in a theater, and the country wants someone to hang for it. Among the accused plotters sits a single woman.

Mary Surratt ran the boarding house where, the prosecution claims, the killing was hatched. Robin Wright plays her. The job of defending a woman the whole nation has already convicted falls to a young war-veteran attorney: James McAvoy's Frederick Aiken takes the case reluctantly, then watches a frightened government bend every rule to reach a fast verdict. Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, and Tom Wilkinson fill out the court.

Redford built the film less around 1865 than around a question that never ages: can a nation suspend the right to a fair trial just because it's afraid? It's restrained, talk-driven cinema for viewers who like history told through law and moral nerve. Stream The Conspirator (2011) online on iFILM.