A great film, I don't think the rating is justified

Rating: 9/10 (16 November 2008)

I was going through my mom's movies and found Amistad, I noticed how it had some really great actors: Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, and Djimon Hounsou, so I decided to check it out. I finished it today and I was absolutely moved by this film, I agree that it's not as memorizing as Schindler's List, but I do feel like this is a terrific film and is just incredibly heart breaking. Spielberg did a great job in telling the horrific stories of illegal slave trading, just what it must be like to not be treated as a human, but nothing more than property and like an animal. Djimon Hounsou, I can't believe this guy was not nominated for an Oscar, he was just incredible in this film and delivered his lines so beautifully. This was a very sad but important story to tell and I felt that no one else could have told it better than Steven Spielberg.
On an illegal slave trade, all the African slaves escape and slaughter the sails men brutally, the slaves are captured though and brought back to America to be put on trial for murder. Baldwin, their lawyer is fighting their innocence while their leader, Cinque, tells their horrific story of their trade and how the men that kidnapped them brutally beat and killed some of them. In a country where almost half the population are slave owners and white, this seems like the trial of the century and hopefully with the help of an ex president, John Quincy Adams by their side, they will be free to go home again.
I highly recommend Amistad if you get the chance to see it, I honestly don't see how others cannot appreciate this story. The actors did a great job, even somehow out of surprise, Matthew McConaughey delivers a decent performance, so why has he taken such a down turn? But Anthony and Djimon truly take the show, especially in their first scene together where Cinque is explaining how he will have his ancestors with him by his side at the trial. The speech that Hopkins delivers at the end is very inspirational and reminds you to forget the hatred, the differences, that deep down inside, we are all human and have feelings. Amistad is a great film and I think it does deserve a better rating and a more fair chance than it's been given.
9/10