# Amistad (1997)

### reviewed by
Michael Redman

    Amistad sails but lacks people

    Amistad
    A Film Review By Michael Redman
    Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman

    ***1/2 (out of ****)

Slavery is bad. After hundreds of years, we've finally figured that one out. This almost universal belief is the both the strength and weakness of director Steven Spielberg's latest "serious" film.

During the late 1830s, a Portuguese slave ship carries a cargo of black men and women kidnapped from their home on Africa's west coast to Cuba to be sold into slavery. Fifty-three of them are stuffed into the "La Amistad" (from a Spanish word for "friendship") by their new Spanish owners.

Freeing himself from his chains, Senge Pieh (Djimon Hounsou), renamed Cinque by his masters, leads a bloody revolt. After killing most of the crew, the Africans force the remaining sailors to return them to their home - or so they think. Instead the ship heads up the coast to the United States.

The Amistad is boarded by an American naval ship and the revolutionaries are put on trial in Connecticut for murder and piracy. The legal question becomes are they free men fighting justly for their freedom or are they property. If they are property, who do they belong to? Their masters? The Spanish government? Salvage rights of the officers who captured the ship? The US government?

The defendants are pawns in several games. Abolitionists Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman) and Lewis Tappan (Stellan Skarsgard) want to free them, but Tappan sees them primarily as a means to further the cause. Their lawyer Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) views the case as a simple one of property rights and a chance to make his share of legal fees. South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun (Arliss Howard) pursues the case for the political advancement of the southern states. President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) is willing to force the result towards his own political ends.

When the verdict looks to free the Africans, Van Buren replaces the judge with one more sympathetic to his wishes. Even that doesn't work and the new judge frees the kidnap victims. At the urging of Calhoun, the President then appeals the case to the Supreme Court, populated by a majority of slave-owners.

This little-known (try finding it in any history text book) incident from America's past would have gone down a darker path were it not for former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) who is persuaded to argue the case before the Supreme Court.

The slavery issue is easy pickin's for Spielberg. Much like his "Shindler's List" (which followed "Jurassic Park" as this follows "Lost World"), the moral sides are not difficult ones to choose. Nazis and slave traders: both treat groups of others as less than human. It's not hard to see who the bad guys are. Without that question to ponder, the director's job is more difficult. He has to make the story interesting.

Spielberg succeeds for the most part. The visual aspect of the film is beyond reproach. Where the movie falls down is a bit more subtle. There are very few _people_ in the tale. In fact, Cinque is the only character who is fleshed out. Tappan and Joadson are "abolitionists": symbols but not humans. Van Buren is a weak politician but nothing else. The rest of the "slaves" barely exist other than dressing for the set. Like many other films about people of color, almost all the major players are white.

The film's salvation lies in the acting strength of everyone involved and the powerful presence of Hounsou. The former model's first major role is a winner. Without speaking more than five words of English, he conveys more emotion than most actors with a thousand lines of dialog.

The other stand-out is Hopkins who seems to be making a career out of portraying American Presidents (he also played the title role in "Nixon"). The impassioned speech by the doddering old man who phases in and out of rationality is among the best court-room drama ever on the screen.

There are some other great moments. Especially impressive are the African's struggle to understand what is going on in the strange land. Their interpretation of the Bible based solely on the pictures and their own experiences is poignant.

As grand as the epic is, it would have more impact had it focused more on the experience from the point of view of the Africans. More humanity in the fight for humanity would have made it a four-star film.

(Michael Redman has written this column for a real long time and is just now getting around to seeing some 1998 films.)

[This appeared in the 2/12/98 "Bloomington Voice" Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at redman@bvoice.com]

-- mailto:redman@bvoice.com This week's film review at http://www.bvoice.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman

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