AN EPIC JOURNEY OF ONE MAN’S FIGHT FOR HIS LIFE AND HIS FREEDOM. THIS STORY OF COURAGE AND DETERMINATION IS PRESENTED BY A DIRECTOR WHOSE VISION GOES TO THE HEART OF THE STORY AND THE SOUL OF ITS CHARACTERS. ONCE AGAIN STEVEN SPIELBERG HAS CREATED A FILM EVENT THAT WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN.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, clichéd 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 McCoy
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March 18, 2010
#1
To date, I have not received the item, Amistad – DVD. I have received all of the other items. I received the item ordered with Amistad and I have not received a response from the seller to inform me if the item is not available.
Please let me know if this item is available, if it has been mailed, and how it can be tracked for delivery. I would appreciate this information very much.
Thank you,
La Verne Edmond
March 18, 2010
#2
This director is so arrogant, that it makes me furious. THis is clear in this movie, that just doesn’t take off anytime. The depth of character is much less than “SCHINDLER’S LIST”, and it is obvious for anyone who watched this movie that Spielberg was aiming for a lot of OSCARS! Há, há, há! He didn’t get it, because the plot is weak.
March 18, 2010
#3
I’ll keep this very short. This might not be fair to the movie but I thought the first 15 min were so bad and mostly grotesque that I had to turn it off. I couldn’t take it anymore!
March 18, 2010
#4
STEVEN SPIELBERG speak with this MARVELLOUS MOVIE of the FILTHYS BOATS OF SLAVERY SINCE 1492 CHRISTOPHE COLOMB THROUGHT AND EVER SINCE AND DURING THE BLOODBATH OF THE AMERICANS INDIANS PEOPLE WHO HAD SUBSTUTUED THEM ! A long rehabilitation many centuries is not enought sufficient but the gesture is beginning beside the Government…. FINALLY ! … DJIMOUN HOUNSOU and the three protagonists actors with him forms a VERY GOOD TEAM AS ANTHONY HOPKINS and many OTHERS ! THE RACES AR’NT ! NOT BLACK NOT RED NOT WHITE … JUST HUMAN … A splendid DVD MOVIE STILL AGAIN BY STEVENS SPIELBERG WONDERFUL AND NOT ENOUGHT LONG ARE THE DESCRIPTIVE SCENARIO… ALAS … BUT WONDERFULL ************
March 18, 2010
#5
This isn’t a good movie. As Spanish I don’t complaint of the cruelty of other Spanish of past centuries. No doubt they were as bad as the movie presents and much more, but also they were usually much better sailors and fighters than currently is show, and masters to mock hypocrital British blockade. For the really interested I strongly recommend two master adventure novels by Pio Baroja a superb author well liked by Hemingway that almost won the Nobel prize. These are titled “Adventures of Captain Chimista” and “Pilots of high Seas” both written about 1900, and you really will know that truly Spanish fearless trafficant of slaves – between other many illegal and inmoral bussines- used to do withouth censorship. Of course as all other colonial countries. Read these and forgot this sugared comedy.