I saw this tonight, the story of Mary Surratt's trial and execution for her involvement in the Lincoln assassination. The demands of time and movie script required that some scenes and characters be condensed, but I thought that the movie was largely right in spirit and "look and feel".
This might be an obscure movie topic for some, but these are local characters for us. I knew two of Samuel Mudd's descendants, several of the conspirators are buried in town, including Booth, whose family history haunts several local areas around Baltimore. Because of that, I liked the movie and thought it was good enough as history in the movies goes. If anything, it seemed to sacrifice Hollywood values for some degree of historic authenticity. The actors were quite good and the production seemed to show some "duty" to portray their characters correctly, especially the tragically conflicted Mary Surratt, who sacrificed her small chance at mercy to save her guilty son who was subsequently not convicted.
The period look was dead-on. It was filmed in Savannah, GA, which has corners in its old town that look a lot like DC in 1865. The execution scenes were uncanny. There is a book that has hundreds of photos taken to document the hangings and the scenes in the movie are almost perfect in their use of that imagery.
