Lincoln
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: November 9, 2012 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
87
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
42
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawMar 20, 2023
Abraham Lincoln's second term, with its momentous choices, has been brought to the screen by Steven Spielberg as a fascinatingly theatrical contest of rhetoric and strategy. Read full review
100
EmpireIan NathanJan 10, 2013
As unexpected as it is intelligent, thanks to virtuoso work from Spielberg and Kushner, Lincoln is landmark filmmaking, while Day-Lewis is so authentic he pulls off that stovepipe. Read full review
100
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanNov 16, 2012
Spielberg has never made a more sophisticated and less sentimental picture. He and writer Tony Kushner craft it like a historical thriller. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottNov 16, 2012
What plays out is something like CSPAN 1865. That is, it's dense, talky stuff at times -- particularly at its start, as the film takes a good 15 minutes to gain traction -- but also highly rewarding and instructive. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirNov 9, 2012
Whatever moment of inspiration caused Spielberg to cast her (Sally Field) as Mary Todd Lincoln, it was sheer genius, because this is a role that demands bigness. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 8, 2012
It blends cinematic Americana with something grubbier and more interesting than Americana, and it does not look, act or behave like the usual perception of a Spielberg epic. It is smaller and quieter than that. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 8, 2012
The experience of watching Daniel Day-Lewis in this role is nothing less than thrilling. This is Lincoln. No need for a time machine, there he is. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 8, 2012
Instead of a grand tableau vivant that lays out the great man and his great deeds like so many too-perfect pieces of waxed fruit, Spielberg brings the leader and viewers down to ground level. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternNov 8, 2012
Mr. Day-Lewis works famously, and phenomenally, from the inside out. The mystery at the core of his gorgeous performance, which is enhanced by Mr. Kushner's script, has to do with his masterly grasp of Lincoln's quicksilver spirit. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottNov 8, 2012
Go see this movie. Take your children, even though they may occasionally be confused or fidgety. Boredom and confusion are also part of democracy, after all. Lincoln is a rough and noble democratic masterpiece - an omen, perhaps, that movies for the people shall not perish from the earth. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertNov 7, 2012
Rarely has a film attended more carefully to the details of politics. Read full review
100
Time OutJoshua RothkopfNov 6, 2012
Defiantly intellectual, complex and true to the shifting winds of real-world governance, Lincoln is not the movie that this election season has earned-but one that a more perfect union can aspire to. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanNov 4, 2012
The movie is grand and immersive. It plugs us into the final months of Lincoln's presidency with a purity that makes us feel transported as though by time machine. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 15, 2012
If it sounds like so much backroom politicking, it is. But it's exceptionally interesting, entertaining backroom politicking. Read full review
90
MovielineAlison WillmoreNov 8, 2012
This is Day-Lewis' movie, and he does with the meditative inner stillness of his character a wonderful thing - he finds a type of heroism that runs counter to all of the usual showy movie signifiers of such a quality. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranNov 8, 2012
There is nothing bravura or overly emotional about Spielberg's direction here, but the impeccable filmmaking is no less impressive for being quiet and to the point. Read full review
90
Village VoiceChris PackhamNov 7, 2012
This Lincoln, stunningly portrayed by Spielberg and Day-Lewis, is real and relatable and so, so cool. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNov 5, 2012
Lincoln is too sharply focused to deserve the pejorative "biopic" label. It's splendid enough to make me wish Spielberg would make a "prequel" to this instead of another Indiana Jones picture. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 18, 2012
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. Read full review
88
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaNov 15, 2012
Never mind a few misguided casting choices; Lincoln is exceptionally good, elevated by a preternatural star turn, and by the energy and invention its director displays in telling a story that doesn't rely on action and special effects. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenNov 9, 2012
Lincoln is directed by Steven Spielberg but, to his great credit, few will mistake this for a Steven Spielberg film. Rather, it's a Tony Kushner film, the playwright who conjured up the wordy but intricately layered script; and it's a Daniel Day-Lewis film, the actor who so richly embodies the iconic title role. Read full review
88
USA TodayClaudia PuigNov 8, 2012
Through this very specific look at a critical time in Lincoln's presidency, Kushner, Spielberg and Day-Lewis work together to present an honest look at America's most revered statesman. Kushner finds an artful way to weave in the texts of the Gettysburg Address and the 13th Amendment, as well as a creative way to present Lincoln's assassination. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 8, 2012
It makes politics exciting again. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 8, 2012
The result, glitches and all, is a great American movie. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineR. Kurt OsenlundNov 2, 2012
Steven Spielberg's film may further the heroism so associated with its subject, and favor a liberal viewpoint that leers down at the Confederates, but it's no bleeding-heart glamorization. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesJan 11, 2013
Steeped in the bitter political divisions of the Civil War, Spielberg's thrilling film about hardwon freedoms is immersed in its own time, but speaks eloquently to ours. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensJan 1, 2013
Lincoln does sometimes get a little sappy around the edges. Though his project here is clearly one of conscious self-restraint, Spielberg can't resist the occasional opportunity for patriotic tear-jerking, usually signaled by a swell of John Williams' symphonic score. But in between, there are long stretches that are as quiet, contemplative, and austere as anything Spielberg has ever done. Read full review
80
NPRIan BuckwalterNov 8, 2012
This Lincoln isn't an abstracted, infallible ideal, but rather a deeply conflicted, often lonely leader simply trying to do the right thing - even if that means few wrong things along on the way. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierNov 8, 2012
The history lesson in Steven Spielberg's austere, engrossing Lincoln is less about the revered President himself but his method for justice. Read full review
80
TimeRichard CorlissNov 8, 2012
This high-IQ sermon is long but never lazy. Renouncing his tendency to make every movie take emotional flight, Spielberg sticks to the story as Kushner has artfully compressed it. Lincoln is brain food and, at another pivotal moment in American political history, an instructive feast. Read full review
80
Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondNov 4, 2012
This is not really a biopic of the great President as the title might indicate, but rather a fascinating, savvy look at the inner-workings of the political process and how things in the White House get - or don't get - done. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyNov 2, 2012
Tony Kushner's densely packed script has been directed by Spielberg in an efficient, unpretentious way that suggests Michael Curtiz at Warner Bros. in the 1940s, right down to the rogue's gallery of great character actors in a multitude of bewhiskered supporting roles backing up a first-rate leading performance by Daniel Day-Lewis. Read full review
80
The GuardianKatey RichOct 29, 2012
If only modern American politics were remotely as entertaining. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc MohanNov 15, 2012
Spielberg manages to give us a Lincoln for our times, inspiringly heroic but demonstrably human. Read full review
75
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallNov 14, 2012
Lincoln is like a thoroughly researched poli-sci term paper come to life, with interesting personal material about the participants relegated to footnotes. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerNov 9, 2012
Whenever Jones is on screen, the film's energy level kicks up several notches, an indication, I think, that Spielberg otherwise overdoses on directorial decorum. Read full review
75
New York PostLou LumenickNov 8, 2012
It's a must-see for Daniel Day-Lewis' charismatic, subtly shaded performance as Lincoln - and an even richer one by Tommy Lee Jones. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnNov 8, 2012
At two and a half hours, Lincoln contains only a single battle scene in its opening seconds. The rest is pure talk, a keen dramatization of Doris Kearns Goodwin's tome "Team of Rivals," that delivers an overview of Lincoln's crowning achievement in chunks of strategy talk. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsNov 7, 2012
Lincoln is built around a magnetic Day-Lewis turn, and the film is a memorable, sometimes stirring look at how even the most righteous bill must struggle, and even cheat, to become a law. It demands a bigger stage than the one it's given here. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 12, 2012
Lincoln, written by Tony Kushner, directed by Steven Spielberg, and derived in part from Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals," is a curious beast. The title suggests a monolith, as if going to this movie were tantamount to visiting Mt. Rushmore, and the running time, of two and a half hours, prepares you for an epic. Yet the film is a cramped and ornery affair, with Spielberg going into lockdown mode even more thoroughly than he did in "The Terminal." Read full review
70
VarietyPeter DebrugeNov 2, 2012
The result looks as much like a Natural History Museum diorama as it sounds: a respectful but waxy re-creation that feels somehow awe-inspiring yet chillingly lifeless to behold, the great exception being Jones' alternately blistering and sage turn as Stevens. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesNov 14, 2012
His (Spielberg) is an old-fashioned style of moviemaking that can produce soaring entertainment or, alternately, a fussed-over theatricality. Minute to minute, Lincoln moves between these extremes. Read full review
50
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsNov 15, 2012
For his complex portrayal, Day-Lewis is likely to have roses thrown at his feet, but for the dreadful film in which he's enslaved, emancipated onlookers will reach for the grapes of wrath. Read full review
50
The PlaylistDrew TaylorNov 13, 2012
There's something deeply poetic about Lincoln making his way through a changed nation to meet his demise. Such poetry is nowhere to be found in Lincoln. Read full review
50
ObserverRex ReedNov 6, 2012
Lincoln is also a colossal bore. It is so pedantic, slow-moving, sanitized and sentimental that I kept pinching myself to stay awake - which, like the film itself, didn't always work. Read full review
More From This Movie

87 Critic Reviews

7.5 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL