Poor drama with no point

Rating: Null/10 (17 September 1999)

It really does worry me when I read comments like "10/10 great acting, very moving". This is very poorly made drama that lacks any depth or emotional punch.
Generally I don't like Spielberg movies as they're quite childish and are aimed at a broad audience, but then along came Schindlers List', which in my opinion was handled brilliantly. I then heard about Amistad and expected more of the same, but I was very disappointed.
All the characters were cardboard stereotypes of what people should be like. The performance by Mathew McConaughey was a repeat of his performance in a A Right to Kill' and seemed very unbelievable. The only performance with any credit was the excellent Hopkins who brought some drama and believability to his character. The token black, Morgan Freeman, seemed to just pop up every so often and didn't really add anything.
Because of the bad direction and acting even the horror scene's lacked any emotion and just appeared as a sequence of melodramatic typical slave scenes.
A strange film with no real point, badly made, unbelievable and surprisingly unmoving.