Lost River: Lincoln's Secret Weapon

This was by far the worst movie I have ever seen. It had a great story to work with but the acting was really unwatchable. It looked like they filmed a very small community acted play. The actors and the director should really be embarrassed by this product. If I could have selected something less than 1 (awful) I would have. I love historical and period pieces but this movie did not capture the time period at all. The dialog was horrible and was very hard to take very serious. I know this was based on a true story but the way it was acted and written I had to look it up on the internet just to see if it was true. I can not stress strongly enough how bad this movie was.

Could endure only 15 minutes of this. Poor dialogue, sloppy acting, careless editing. For stars only because it pointed me to search for the historical story.

Finally after more than a century the long awaited story of Anna Ella Carroll has made it to the big screen, recognition an amazingly intelligent woman so rightfully deserved only to be deprived of by the greedy and powerful during her time. Actors Fritz Klein as President Lincoln and Tami Sutton as Anna Ella Carroll accurately portray their characters in a true story about a woman that served with Lincoln's Cabinet. Lost River Lincoln's Secret Weapon, an original screenplay researched and written by historian Bruce Bridegroom, features a storyline, colorful scenery and costumes spanning practically the entire 19TH Century; some in supporting roles could have been more carefully selected. Considering the films budget, only a million dollars, I think the production company did an outstanding job in producing a film so historically significant in time for The Sesquicentennial Observance of The Civil War.

If you're a history buff, this is an interesting story. This film, however, is terrible at conveying any information about Anne CarrolTo be kind, the acting is horrible, stilted, and the accents are wrong. The film is slow, boring, and seemingly pointless. Ms. Carroll's role in the Lincoln administration and her value to the country is totally lost in this mess. The costuming and interiors are OK, there's few exterior shots and it's boring. Because of the bad acting and pacing, other important points (eg military issues, corruption) fall flat. It's never really explained why Anne Carroll chooses to support the North and oppose the secession of Maryland, although there are strong historical reasons. I think I'll read Blackwell's 1897 biography A Military Genius: Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland (free on gutenberg.org).

I'll be blunt- do not waste your time on this film unless you are a film major in school and must write about how far a film can fall from its respective potential subject. Where to begin? Horrendous acting throughout plugs up the movie from the start- from the to-be- expected bad reenactor performance, to the local community theater amateur actor abilities. Then there is the actual script... awful. Awful isn't enough- dire bests sums up the state of your brain trying to follow what is occurring in this (seemingly) student film (?). Truly, it is painful to try to follow this film in any respect to learning something about Carroll. Read any book on Carroll instead. Between the silly script and its players, there is a barrage of poor make-up, costuming, sets, scene locations (the Sonoran Desert as a back drop to the Civil War, really?), editing, uh- just spare yourself. I must also state that many people cry foul on Carroll's story as even being legitimate to begin with. This movie only pushes her possible involvement further into the shadows, quite possibly out of pure embarrassment by association.