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Review

In the same waters as his Academy Award-winning Schindler's List, director Spielberg once again casts an unflinching and unsentimental eye towards prejudice and its ugly consequences with this startling glimpse into an unknown chapter in American history. Based on an actual incident in 1839, the story begins as the slave ship Amistad speeds towards America. Under the leadership of Cinque (an impressive Hounsou), the slaves break free and kill all but two of their captors. In America they stand trial for mutiny, and are defended by former President John Quincy Adams (a brilliant Hopkins) in the film's powerful, stirring finale. Spielberg doesn't compromise in the depiction of the horrors faced by the slaves. Whether showing them shackled together en masse in the bowels of the ship (much like the Jews on their way to the camps), recalling the chilling practice of dumping chained human beings overboard, or examining the moralistic attitudes of a fledgling nation, the film works on an artisitic level as well as an emotional one. Only an inconsistent narrative structure keeps this from being a classic story of injustice, though the central theme and context of the film will linger in the mind for a very long time.