A Painfully flawed film.

Rating: 3/10 (9 November 1998)

Steven Spielberg has created a painfully flawed film about the Amistad rebellion. Part of what makes this film a difficult, even at times offensive experience is the way the film is more interested in white male subjectivity (should this surprise us based on the creative teams identities) over any subjective concerns about the African characters. Real hard questions need to be asked about the historical inaccuracies and distortions and how these are used to suggest that there was a much larger white reaction against slavery than really existed at the time of the rebellion. It is difficult to not compare this film to Schindler's List and to see what Spielberg can do with a film about a holocaust. The "fictionally" created Black abolishionist character portrayed by Morgan Freeman is so utterly under utilized and under dramatized that he could be removed entirely from the film without in any way disrupting the narrative. The actual historical facts of this fascinating rebellion and the legal struggle to free the African prisoners is so much more interesting than anything the entertainment team has come with in this horrible, offensive, mess.