Review of Amistad (1997) by Michael R — 12 Aug 2011
Yeah I know, another movie the hip ppl say I'm not allowed to like. It's a very hard movie with compassion. A group of prisoners mutiny a slaver ship and are contested as slaves or property or illegally trafficked people.
The religious sentimentalists who see the plight of the prisoners as a soapbox item turn tail once the legal issues get complex, and leave the lawyers to unsentimentally use the law against itself to set them free.
The acting has a lot of power, the direction is deft and unshowy, the storytelling is astute. We believe we have innate rights to freedom, but it's often won at very hard human costs, plus it's the whims of details, fine print, and fate that set us up to prove what we are made of.
The ending is the opposite of sentimental. (And the critics who hate this film and The Color Purple because of the director are also the ones most likely to lavish praise on tarantino's racist (they call it 'genre' now) scam Django next year.
) Yes there a couple of Spielberg pics I'm not especially fond of (Sugarland Express and one other). Amistad is a fine movie.
This review of Amistad (1997) was written by Michael R on 12 Aug 2011.
Amistad has generally received positive reviews.
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