Amistad<\/em><\/a> Spielberg has even outdone himself.<\/p>\nThe film follows a group of would be slaves as they mutiny on the ship, the Amistad, only to land in America and be imprisoned while various groups fight over their fate in the American courts.\u00a0 The two survivors the slaves left alive following the mutiny put their claim in, as well as the adolescent Queen of Spain (Anna Paquin), while the abolitionists, led by Morgan Freeman and Stellan Skarsgard, fight for their release.\u00a0 Matthew McConaughey enters the picture as Baldwin, a property lawyer who takes on the case with the argument of the slaves being stolen property and, therefore, not slaves at all.\u00a0 The central slave in all of this is Cinque (Djimon Hounsou) who gets to tell his particular story serving as the figurehead of the slaves and embodiment of what they have gone through.\u00a0 Looming in the background of all of this is former President John Quincy Adams, played by Anthony Hopkins, seemingly all but forgotten and hidden by the shadow of his father, John Adams.<\/p>\n
The films has all the elements of a heart wrenching story, but Spielberg does not trust it and continually overplays every scene so not a single scene rings true, instead hammering it home with every device at his disposal.\u00a0 If John Quincy Adams speaks it is accompanied by composer\u00a0 John Williams attempt at heroic music, and a beam of light through a window to shine on him while all others in the room remain in awe.\u00a0 The \u201cgive us us free\u201d scene is particularly embarrassing as Cinque rises up, Williams\u2019 score rising up with him as if we did not know this is important, and delivers his broken English plea while the people in the courtroom are moved, however, we are not.\u00a0 Subtlety is completely lost on Spielberg.\u00a0 In a particularly embarrassing scene, one slave, who has miraculously learned to read the Bible during his incarceration, explains to Cinque about the Bible, Jesus, and Heaven and how it all relates to them.<\/p>\n
The film suffers in nearly every way possible.\u00a0 The script is full of long, boring, overreaching speeches, John Williams\u2019 score absolutely drenches the film in sentimentality that the acting cannot escape from underneath, and even the normally solid acting of Anthony Hopkins labors through Spielberg\u2019s over directing and the ridiculous makeup which makes him look like a leprechaun.\u00a0 Only Djimon Housou and Matthew McConaughey are able to escape this film with some dignity left.\u00a0 If Spielberg was not constantly trying to call attention to how much we should care about Cinque and what he is saying or what he went through, then Hounsou\u2019s performance would clearly have been a tour de force.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Spielberg often forgets the old adage, \u201cless is more.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Byron Potau. Viewed on DVD. It would seem a great blessing to have something in common with the great film director John Ford, except when it is his worst quality.\u00a0 Steven Spielberg often suffers from the same thing that marred Ford\u2019s great films throughout his career, sentimentality, but in Amistad Spielberg has even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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