I will agree with rdl6989 in one aspect.. This is very much a movie about Lincoln in the context of political policy... it does get very deep into political wonk. However I disagree with the handling of the assassination... I thought it was very clever and removed the moment from the political arena where most of the film took place, and transitioned to the personal.
I guess I went into the theater expecting to see a movie about a young man in Indiana and Kentucky splitting rails and teaching himself to read, then failing at innumerable careers in Illinois before going to Washington.