Amistad
by Steven Spielberg
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, Nigel HawthorneDirector: Steven Spielberg
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 155 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-05-04
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Dreamworks Video
Movie Reviews of Amistad
Movie Review: Educational and Entertaining!
Summary: 5 Stars
The film brings to the screen the 1839 Amistad incident when a slave ship experiencing a rebellion was seized by the U.S. Navy and towed into an American port. Subsequently, a trial will commence with the Cuban slavers, the Spanish government, and U.S. naval officers all vying for custody of the slaves while pitted at the same time against those supporting their release and safe return to Africa. The film provides for a very good description of the pre-Civil War era along with people and events slowly tearing at American society and by extension the country as whole.
In contrast to Amazon.com's narrow minded reviewer, Dave McCoy and his failed, off-the-target review, the movie actually does an excellent job of transporting the viewer to 19th Century United States and presenting important people like J.C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, and John Quincy Adams, groups like the abolitionists, institutions like slavery outside the USA as well the more "humane" American version of slavery, notions like Sectionalism, international law/treaties, international relations, the American judicial system, the American political system and much more.
Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, Djimon Hounsou, and the rest of the cast, have carried out their performances very well
Steven Spielberg's Amistad is very well written and very well presented allowing for a thought-provoking movie that will provide food for thought well after it is over as it offers valuable insight into a very important period of American History.
Summary of Amistad
Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitized history lesson, Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most of Schindler's List (and, later, Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his grandiose motives and simplifies slavery, treating it as cut- and-dry genre piece. Characters are easy Hollywood stereotypes--"villains" like the Spanish sailors or zealous abolitionists are drawn one-dimensionally and sneered upon. And Spielberg can't suppress his gifted eye, undercutting normally ugly sequences, such as the terrifying slave passage, which is shot as a gorgeous, well-lit composition. At its core, Amistad is a traditional courtroom drama, centered by a tired, clich?d narrative: a struggling, idealistic young lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) fighting the crooked political system and saving helpless victims. Worse yet, Spielberg actually takes the underlying premise of his childhood fantasy, E.T. and repackages it for slavery. Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the leader of the West African rebellion, is presented much like the adorable alien: lost, lacking a common language, and trying to find his way home. McConaughey is a grown-up Elliot who tries communicating complicated ideas such as geography by drawing pictures in the sand or language by having Cinque mimic his facial expressions. Such stuff was effective for a sci-fi fantasy about the communication barriers between a boy and a lost alien; here, it seems like a naive view of real, complex history. --Dave McCoyDrama DVD Video
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