Official Synopsis
The incredible journey of a group of enslaved Africans who overtake their captor’s ship and attempt to return to their beloved homeland. When the ship is seized, the slaves are brought to the United States where they are charged with murder and await their fate in prison. An enthralling courtroom battle ensues that captures the attention of the entire nation. But for the men and women on trial, it’s simply a fight for the basic right of all mankind…freedom.
The movie begins where it should, aboard the La Amistad, a slave ship, as a revolt happens during the evening ours. African slave, Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), gets loose from below, frees his fellow slaves and takes down every living sailor soul on board the ship, sans two Spanish gentlemen — they are to guide the Africans back to their homelands.
Instead of taking Cinque and his people back home, the gentlemen find their way to America, where the slaves are captured by the American navy and jailed under the accusation of murder. Fighting for his life, and the life of his people, Cinque and company must get through the barriers of language and culture to fight their way back to their homeland.
Accompanying them on their flight towards freedom is a young property lawyer named Roger Sherman Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), his friend Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman), translator Ensign Covey (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the ruthless (and old) John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins).
One helluva cast of real life folks and actors, right? Both are the best parts of this film and both are the reason why you want to watch this film. The two most impressive parts of the movie are driven by Anthony Hopkins and Djimon Hounsou. Hopkins gives one of the best speeches I’ve seen in a movie at the end of Amistad. His mannerisms and intelligence shine in the last 2-4 minute speech given by his John Quincy Adams. It’s probably the best part of the film and worth the wait to get to that point.
Next to him is the enormously talented Djimon Hounsou (loved this guy in Gladiator), who brings the power and drama of an angry slave to the silver screen. The guy is just absolutely devastated and pissed throughout this film, and that fits the situation his character is in quite well. He is dominant onscreen and commands your attention. Can’t wait to see him in Guardians of the Galaxy in August.
Anyway, the cast certainly does offer up some great moments in the film, and they need to because the story suffers a bit from bad pacing and dull spots.
That’s the catch for historical films like these, sometimes the records are scarce and some gaps need to be either smoothed out, filled in or stretched to make the story work. I think that the story has way too much protagonist in it and not enough of firmly establish antagonist. Sure there were all sorts of people to blame when it came to pulling these poor Africans from their home and enslaving them. The queen of Spain was to blame for the initial capture, ‘purchase’ and transportation of Cinque and his friends, but we only get to see a small bit of her in this movie. It would have been nice to see her snideness towards the enslaving of human beings and how she looked down on people. You can never hate someone like that enough.
The American president and his cabinet were to blame for not showing enough backbone and standing up against Spain, but we don’t really get to see much of them, except bits and pieces when they’re trying to save their own political asses. If you’re going to show a great fight for righteousness and good, we have to have an established enemy to blame at the end of it all. But we only get bits and pieces of the bad guys/gals, and that’s sort of an injustice for Cinque, as his struggles, as well as his lawyers/American friends, aren’t as magnified as they should be.
Again, I think the lack of records is probably to blame, but if you’re going to make a movie of this then you need to fill those gaps or stretch it a bit.
What you get at the end of this film is a triumphant victory for Cinque and his people, as well as the great shift in American attitudes towards slave trade. That is enough to warrant a viewing of this movie, especially if you’ve never read anything about slave trade like the book Roots. Amistad is definitely a good film, though it needed a bit more beef to make it more powerful.
As for the Blu-ray, the transfer is gorgeous. You get a lot of beautiful blues, reds, yellows, browns, and some really good whites/blacks that stand out in the picture. There is some graininess in the picture if you look hard enough, but it only shows up in low light and gray/white areas of the picture. There aren’t any compression issues nor are there any signs of color banding. There’s a lot to like about this transfer to HD, though it’s not perfect.
In the features department you get the following:
– The Making of Amistad
– Theatrical trailer HD
Not a lot going on here, though the ‘making of’ featurette is actually quite good. You get some solid details of how the movie was made, where the story came from and how the actors were chosen. Good stuff, though I would love commentary on this release.