Kris' friend's review - did she like it or not?

Rating: 8/10 (28 November 2000)

"The movie was much better than i expected. Morgan Freeman was hardly used but believable even though I don't think any black man at that time could put his 2 cents worth in without white people's permission (with exception of people like George Washington Carver and the likes.. but they were rural and contributed to literature and agriculture..never legal issues). I liked how he showed american blacks avoiding contact with the africans. I liked how he didn't use much narration and chose visual language instead to show the slave ship, probably the most powerful part of the movie. The one thing i really didn't care for and it was totally totally false historically speaking was in making the English look like they were anti-slavery, anti-emperialists, blah blah blah. False false false. Why the hell did he have to do that? The shot of the ship's masts symbolizing crosses...that was annoying. Plus the Bible sub plot.. did we really need to see that...does Speilberg think the viewer will see more humanity in the Africans because they read the Bible? Overall I'm impressed more with the story, that this actually happened and that we haven't heard this story in school. Did John Qunicy Adams really give a speech in front of the supreme court defending a boat full of Africans? Did the supreme court, 9 of which are slave owners really accept his arguments? I can't believe it and the fact that this fact is unknown is amazing. Today, 1 out of 4 africans are dying from aids and we still pump money to Israel and everywhere else. The world on a whole hardly gives a damn about Africans today. Yet in 1836 they bothered to set sail a ship to send 40 Africans back home. I still think Speilberg should stick to comedy adventures." ----------- My reply to her was, "I don't know, I kind of liked it." 8 out of 10.