Amistad the courant. Cinque leads revolt of captives aboard the ship Amistad, off Cuba.
Ship begins erratic course up East Coast of United States.
It begins with a closeup of a black man in blackness, a half light playing over his strained face, over his frantic, desperate hands. Against the crashing of thunder of a storm at sea, he scratches away madly, then breaks from his iron fetters. Freeing his brother captives, he leads them up on deck, slaughtering most of the crew of the Spanish slave ship. Spielberg does not flinch from depicting the revolt led by Joseph Cinque as brutal, even savage. Part of the intelligence of Spielberg's opening can be heard in how he handles the words shouted by the Africans.