Rating: 
Summary: Well meaning, but misses the mark
Review: I sincerely believe that Spielberg had honest intentions to make statements about racism in this, but somehow, he gets just too caught up in making a spectacular movie. There are good elements in this movie, but they unfortunately are exterior elements, details like the dress of the characters, spectacular cinematography, and some very insightful acting, especially Anthony Hopkins as President John Quincy Adams. All this adds to the entertainment aspect of the film but not to the essence. He doesn't really force us to look at the morals and the ethics of the situation. Instead, there's a superficiality throughout. I do believe that this story is worth telling, and the resulting movie is worth seeing because through the superficial entertainment the discerning viewer may be somewhat stimulated into thinking about the issues that could have been better tackled here. As in SCHINDLER'S LIST, Spielberg is looking at racism, but through different eyes. Somehow, there is a condescending tone here, and he is not tuned in completely to the complexities of the situation portrayed. There's no way that I can trash this film. On the other hand, I can not hold it up as an important film that must be seen. For entertainment and for a partial look at the subject, this is OK. For a deeper questioning, look elsewhere. I've just reviewed a TV adaptation of AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS, and while that is hardly spectacular, it gives far deeper insight.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Film -- But Less So Than The History It Revises
Review: Movies about historical subjects often fictionalize. Amistad has a strong ideological slant. The history it revises is available in the excellent book, Mutiny on the Amistad, by Howard Jones. A review essay in the February 1998 issue of Commentary Magazine describes the movie's bias and offers examples. Here are others. The film consistently overstates the Black and understates the White role in the effort to free the Africans: 1. The historical role of Dwight Janes (a white New London abolitionist) of alerting American abolitionists to the arrest of the Africans is transferred to Joadson, a fictitious black abolitionist, played by Morgan Freeman. 2. The historical role of Baldwin and Tappan (both white abolitionists) in requesting the help of ex-president John Quincy Adams early in the case is transferred primarily to Joadson, whose appeal is portrayed as more intellectually and morally cogent than Tappan's. 3. The historical role of Adams in helping defense counsel to improve their case by peppering them with legal questions is transferred to Cinque, the African leader. 4. The historical pressure from white public opinion in the North, widely favorable to the Africans, is omitted. 5. The film gives no sign of the impressive intellectual strength in the white abolitionist ranks, e.g., the speed and acumen with which central issues in the case were grasped. Within a few days of the Africans' arrest, Janes had outlined the argument in their defense that would be adopted by the Supreme Court. Within two weeks, Seth Staples and Theodore Sedgwick, white abolitionist lawyers, had addressed a memo to President Van Buren, reinforcing the Janes analysis and arguing powerfully against any executive move to take the case away from the courts. Fictions are employed to suggest that the story's blacks are sharper and wiser than the whites: 1. Joadson's opinion that the destruction of slavery is necessary to complete the American revolution, rudely put down by Adams at their first meeting, is echoed and vindicated by the close of Adams' argument before the Court. Here a person who never existed is represented as making an argument in a meeting that never took place, supporting a thesis that Adams never adopted. 2. Cinque's superb intelligence enables him to figure out what Baldwin means by drawing lines in the sand, to raise a host of possibly relevant legal points and to teach Adams the perspective that crowns his argument. The divination, the legal advice and the crowning argument were all fanciful. The film also misleads by anachronistically positing the danger of civil war if the Africans won in court: a fictitious warning by the Southern Senator John Calhoun that their release would be a long step toward war and a fictitious willingness by Adams to accept that result as completing the American revolution. This grossly exaggerates the portentousness of the case. People were not predicting or threatening civil war, despite events far more divisive than a Supreme Court decision based on the illegality of the transatlantic slave trade. The beauty of this case for the abolitionists was that the men who claimed to own these Africans were not Americans. Here actual slavery could be vigorously and triumphantly combatted by the substantial body of white opinion that considered slavery and the slave trade morally wrong, but did not wish to press abolition on the South. More important, the film creates a false impression re the kind of arguments presented to the Supreme Court in behalf of the Africans, and the basis of their victory. It suggests that the captives were freed because Adams persuaded the court to stand tall with the Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers. But in fact only a few seconds of Adams' eight-hour argument referred to the Declaration, and the argument that counted with the Court was made by Baldwin. According to the Court's opinion, the question was whether these Africans were owned by the Spanish claimants. The decision that they were not was based on a law and a fact: the Spanish law banning the Atlantic slave trade, and the fact of fraud in the ship's papers identifying the Africans as ladinos. The injustice of slavery is now so central to our moral code that it may be hard for people to understand how any Supreme Court decision could stop short of it, if the justices were responding to the merits. But the Court was applying the positive law of its time. It accepted the rationale argued by the abolitionists from the beginning (Janes to Baldwin, Staples and Sedgwick to Van Buren) and presented by Baldwin as his second argument. This rationale protected mutinous blacks, provided they had been illegally held as slaves. In his first argument, Baldwin sought a wider protection, a rule under which the status of a black fugitive would be determined not by the federal government but by the state to which he fled. By this proposal mutinous blacks fleeing places other than the American South could be declared free on their arrival in a free Northern state, regardless of their slave status elsewhere. But this argument (which the Court's opinion ignored) was as firmly confined to positive law as the argument that triumphed. In an early sentence, Baldwin invoked "the great principles of the Revolution," the Declaration of Independence and "the genius of our institutions," but he did not profess to derive his legal conclusions from these premises. Adams made JUSTICE in caps a continuing theme of his speech, but he was not thereby referring to any provision of the Declaration or any position on the morality of slavery. He was arraigning the Van Buren administration in detail and at length for favoring the Spanish claims when justice required impartiality, and for intervening in ways that justice would have barred. An ex-President exposing the machinations of the current chief executive, a former Secretary of State examining and scolding every step and misstep of the present Secretary! Yes, a helluva story - the reality much more interesting than the transmogrifications!
Rating: 
Summary: an important movie
Review: this movie is an important movie with a sincere and painful look at the slave trade america was involved in early in our history. while the acting was top notch, the film did feel a bit heavy-handed---it is spielberg after all---and it didnt seem to have a true plot to it.
Rating: 
Summary: "Amistad" is powerful and unforgetable!
Review: The movie "Amistad" is based on a true story that chronicles the long journey of a group of enslaved Africans who overtake their captor's ship, La Amistad, and attempt to return to their native homeland. When the La Amistad was seized, these captives are brought to the United States where they are charged with murder and await their sentance. The legal battle ensues and captures the attention of the entire nation, challenging the very foundation of the American justice system as these enslaved Africans fight for their freedom.
Rating:
Summary: An Powerful well made Drama.
Review: A Spanish Slave Ship named "La Amistad", When the Ship Captains were murdered by a African Tribe, which they are innocent. A idealistic lawyer (Matthew McConaughey replaying his role from A Time To Kill) defend them for thier freedom, while batting the American Judical System. Directed by Four Time Oscar-Winner:Steven Spielberg (Duel, The Sugarland Express, Jaws) has made himself a more successful film-which is based on a True Story than he did with the Underappciated "Empire of the Sun". Terrific Performance by Djimon Hounsou as the Lead Slave. Fine Performances by Morgan Freeman, Oscar-Winner:Anthony Hopkins (In a Oscar Nominated Role), Nigel Hawthorne, Stellan Sarsgard, Oscar-Winner:Anna Paquin, David Paymer and Pete Postlethwaite. Also Oscar Nominated for Three Different Oscars including:Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Music Score. This is one of Spielberg`s most underrated films, it`s a fine historial drama. Arliss Howard appears Unbilled. Grade:A-.
Rating: 
Summary: Lying Garbage
Review: This is a film about a true life incident. Some slaves on route to Cuba mutinied and took control of their ship. They attempted to force the surviving crew to take them to Africa but instead the captain of the ship directed it north and it was captured by the Americans. This then led to a complicated debate about what should happen. Under existing law it was clear that if the slaves were from Africa then the taking of them as slaves amounted to kidnapping. They were entitled to kill the people in the ship and to escape. If on the other hand they were slaves from Cuba their actions would amount to murder. The various court cases were however not about these issues. What they were about was procedural matters of whether the "slaves" should be returned to Cuba for a trial run in a kangaroo court or whether they should not... The critical thing of course is that the trials were not concerned about slavery at all. Slavery was a given, the question for the various courts was simply were these men slaves or were they free men wrongly reduced to servitude and further if so what court should make the decision. Instead the film tries to make this film an epic which somehow showed that America was for slaves. Hopkins makes a number of moving speeches on this theme but the reality is that it is all nonsense. This incident had nothing at all to do with the move to abolish slavery in the United States. The film also is obnoxious as it relegates the Africans at the centre of the action to playing the role of dumb oxes who are saved by intrepid white characters. If these ideological problems don't cause you any problems the film is a reasonably well executed florid melodrama.
Rating:
Summary: Young America Wrestles With It's Conscience
Review: No ladies and gentlemen, I assure you, this is
no "slave film"! This is a film about a young
America... An amalgam of Walloons, British
Dissenters, Puritans, Quakers, and Sephardic Jews;
[among others]. Here we are, right in the middle
of the lucrative epoch of the trafficking of human
beings for the sole purpose of free labor. And, as
a result of the unusual circumstances from the
arrival of a mutinied Spanish slave ship named,
"La Amistad", we are presented with a major
ethical dilemma which tests the high values and
righteous philosophy of our law makers. This is the kind of film that makes you very proud
to be an American! We are, by design, constantly
questioning and analyzing ourselves as to right and
wrong. Particularly as it applies to human rights.
[Surprisingly, this analysis of conscience held
true for slavery as well; albeit extremely unpopular!
Harriett Tubman rode America's conscience [Quakers]
to freedom, over one hundred times, and with over
three hundred and fifty people!] Our history has proven that whenever we, as a country,
abuse the rights of others, we pay for it in spades!
Two more examples would be 1.) the detainment of
Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during the
second world war. And 2.) the indiscriminate human
violations of the Vietnam war. Both scénarios caused
an ongoing national nightmare that continues to affect
our psyche!
In Steven Spielberg's "Amistad", American law is
personified within the characters of Anthony Hopkins
and Matthew McConaughey. Both of which are constantly
pinching at the great American soul. Reminding it of
what the original shapers of the American Constitution
had envisioned for it's people. The film does a good job by focusing on the young lawyer
[McConaughey], and the former US president [Hopkins],
whom must defend the kidnapped Africans [Sierra Leone],
so their dream of returning home could be realized. Giving up profit for the sake of preserving equal
rights for *all*, is this film's message! "Amistad",
the film, and "Amistad" the history lesson, are well
worth the one hundred and fifty-five minutes it takes
to view it!!
Rating:
Summary: Most Enjoyable for History Proffs and Buffs
Review: Wow! What a good movie! Those where my words the FIRST time I watched it. Then I watched it again and thought more. I decided that it was good, but not great as I had thought the first time. The bad pionts are namely: it is more about lawmen and law rather than the Africans, and far too extreme for most viewers, not including myself. And the biggest con for the terribly anticlimatic ending. I mean I understand that it is accurate and probably what really happened, BUT COME ON! I sat through the whole 2 hours and 30 minutes just to get a letdown? And to make it worse, you have to read it, why couldn't they have showed it out? Like I said, it is probably realistic, but be a little creative and give us a type of ending that made THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION such a masterpiece. Even the director Steven Spielburg made an awesome ending in SHINDLER'S LIST that killed this movie. I am not talking about the few minutes before the end, those were cool and formed some kind of freedom among the Africans that were illegaly traded. I am talking about the VERY END WHERE THEY SHOW THE BOAT LEAVING AND MAKE YOU READ THE REST. Besides all of that, it could have been a masterpiece. There is a great cast, great speech at the end by ANTHONY HOPKINS, awesome music, good DIOLOUGE and DIALECT( especially with the Africans ), and MORGAN FREEMAN always kicks butt with his acting. Just don't be expecting a great deal of him in this flick though. Also to mention: MATTHEY McCONAUGHEY has almost the exact same role in this movie that he did in A TIME TO KILL. PETE POSTLETHWAITE finally has hair on his head!!!LOL! And lastly, Anthony Hopkins sould have won best actor for this movie( must have been a tough call, he was nominated against ROBIN WILLIAMS in the highly overrated GOOD WILL HUNTING. If anyone wants the PLOT, here it is: Illegaly traded Africans are boarded on the boat LA AMISTAD. They revolt against the crew members and only leave two alive to steer the ship back to their homeland AFRICA. They are cought by some other ship, taken to AMERICA to wait for their fate on trail. But a group of lawmen and lawyers accompany them to help prove that they were illegaly traded. Overall: Well acted, good screenplay, accurate, but doesn't welcome nomal movie viewers as much as history buffs, unlike the ultimate SHINDLER'S LIST. Add it to your "hollywood human triumph" movie collection. On a 4 star rating, this gets 3 stars by me.
Rating: 
Summary: Stunningly Photographed Propogana
Review: The cinematography is truly stunning, one of the finest examples in film. Both stars are for that. The film is little more than propaganda and do we really need this to tell us that slavery was bad? Spielberg attached his name to this, but inside Hollywood rumors talk about how he was too busy making Saving Private Ryan to ever appear on set. I hope that excuse this shoddy film P.S. If you look hard, there are 8 instances where boom microphone intrude into the top of the screen.
Rating:
Summary: Histary in a blender.
Review: This film takes manipulation to a new level. First of all Speilberg spends the whole first 1 1/2 hour stating and restating the self evident truth that slavery was wrong. O.K so just how guilty is the white audience supposed to feel before enough is enough? Secondly Speilberg evidently has no quams about rewriting history so long as it pushes his P.C. agenda. In reality Adams and the blacks he was defending never met, and they(blacks) never sat foot inside of a courtroom. Another of Speilbergs interesting oversights is that the lead character(i forgot his name) after being set free form the evil shackles of slavery, returned to Africa and and participated in the slave trade. If this trend continues I wonder what goofy bunk he'll try next? Maybe he can remake a "historically accurate" WWII movie where the Japanese won.
| 
