Instead, we get a Cliff's Notes-style outline of the case plus a few random scenes of the trials. When Spielberg should be storytelling, too often we get theatrics instead. Cinque, for example, bursts out in the middle of their trial and starts speaking for the first time in English. Rather than anyone trying to repress the outbursts of the prisoner, everyone stares in awe at him as the music contains something approaching the sounds of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir raising a loud voice to heaven. Morgan Freeman and Stellan Skarsgard play Joadson and Tappan, the two abolitionists who hire Baldwin.
Freeman gets little dialog and is basically wasted in the movie.
But then, most of the characters in the film exist mainly in caricature. Tappan, for example, is the canonical do-gooder who is perfectly willing to let others die for his cause. Nigel Hawthorne repeats his Academy Award nominated role of George III, except this time his character is addressed as President Martin Van Buren. Adams comes into the story mainly at the last as he argues the slaves' case in front of the Supreme Court. Even given the film's ponderous pacing, the slaves' story does come out.