Auction Ended
Amistad
Sold
Brand New
QTY 1
$0.05
MSRP
MSRP is a sample online retail price.
$28.99
Last Update:
01/04/2025, 2:34 PM ESTItem Information
MSRP:
MSRP is a sample online retail price.
$28.99
Brand:
Paramount
Condition:
Brand New
Description:
Steven Speilberg's intense historical drama starring Morgan Freeman, Nigel Hawthorne, Anthony Hopkins, Dijimon Hounsou and Matthew McConaughey. (1997) Running time: 155 minutes. Steven Spielberg's most simplistic, sanitized history lesson, Amistad, explores the symbolic 1840s trials of 53 West Africans following their bloody rebellion aboard a slave ship. For most of Schindler's List (and, later, Saving Private Ryan) Spielberg restrains himself from the sweeping narrative and technical flourishes that make him one of our most entertaining and manipulative directors. Here, he doesn't even bother trying, succumbing to his driving need to entertain with beautiful images and contrived emotion. He cheapens his grandiose motives and simplifies slavery, treating it as cut- and-dry genre piece. Characters are easy Hollywood stereotypes--"villains" like the Spanish sailors or zealous abolitionists are drawn one-dimensionally and sneered upon. And Spielberg can't suppress his gifted eye, undercutting normally ugly sequences, such as the terrifying slave passage, which is shot as a gorgeous, well-lit composition. At its core, Amistad is a traditional courtroom drama, centered by a tired, clichéd narrative: a struggling, idealistic young lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) fighting the crooked political system and saving helpless victims. Worse yet, Spielberg actually takes the underlying premise of his childhood fantasy, E.T. and repackages it for slavery. Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the leader of the West African rebellion, is presented much like the adorable alien: lost, lacking a common language, and trying to find his way home. McConaughey is a grown-up Elliot who tries communicating complicated ideas such as geography by drawing pictures in the sand or language by having Cinque mimic his facial expressions. Such stuff was effective for a sci-fi fantasy about the communication barriers between a boy and a lost alien; here, it seems like a naive view of real, complex history. --Dave McCoy
Model:
MFR#VG
Lot Code:
WEB1243668
Width:
5.4 inches
Depth:
0.5 inches
Weight:
0.1 pounds
Length:
7.5 inches
Additional Info:
Brand New
Pickup Location:
1825 Webster Street, Dayton OH 45414
Warehouse Location:
I2
Auction Number
WBS2401562