Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780783235455
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0783235453
Label: Dreamworks Video
Manufacturer: Dreamworks Video
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Publisher: Dreamworks Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: July 06, 1999
Running Time: 152 minutes
Sales Rank: 112118
Studio: Dreamworks Video
Theatrical Release Date: December 10, 1997
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Educational and Entertaining!
The film brings to the screen the 1839 Amistad incident when a slave ship experiencing a rebellion was seized by the U.S. Navy and towed into an American port. Subsequently, a trial will commence with the Cuban slavers, the Spanish government, and U.S. naval officers all vying for custody of the slaves while pitted at the same time against those supporting their release and safe return to Africa. The film provides for a very good description of the pre-Civil War era along with people and events slowly tearing at American society and by extension the country as whole.
In contrast to Amazon.com's narrow minded reviewer, Dave McCoy and his failed, off-the-target review, the movie actually does an excellent job of transporting the viewer to 19th Century United States and presenting important people like J.C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, and John Quincy Adams, groups like the abolitionists, institutions like slavery outside the USA as well the more "humane" American version of slavery, notions like Sectionalism, international law/treaties, international relations, the American judicial system, the American political system and much more.
Anthony Hopkins, Morgan Freeman, Matthew McConaughey, Djimon Hounsou, and the rest of the cast, have carried out their performances very well
Steven Spielberg's Amistad is very well written and very well presented allowing for a thought-provoking movie that will provide food for thought well after it is over as it offers valuable insight into a very ... Read More
Rating: - More of a personal experience, than a review
Historically accurate this in your ganeckdagazoink. It is like the intellectuals who pan 'Troy', either 1. because its not accurate historically,or 2. because it was a travesty to have Brad Pitt play the greatest warrior ever. That is neither here nor there, however magic comes sometimes when you least expect it. I believe firmly, that in the movie industry it is hardly ever about how talented you are, you can always, for the most part, hone the craft, but more about luck, as most professional actors (or struggling ones for that matter) will tell you. The right place, the right time, the right look, the exact moment you make a gesture in the hallway waiting for your 3 minutes to read two lines for a Dial Soap commercial and the casting director just happens to see your brow go up a certain distinct way, and Monday morning your agent calls you and you have the gig. Luck, hmmm it came crawling my way one brutal winter in New England.
It was around five months after my return from film school in Manhattan, a good one too, I was arriving at 4:25 in the morning in my town I had lived in for 2 some-ard years, for make-up. Of all the movies I could have been in, of all the places I could have been that year, (I travel a lot), of all the names I would have loved to have graced the screen with, and of every director I would have love to have sat in awe and watched, I, (and it could have been eternal bliss from there if it were the last), was going to be in a Speilberg film. Cliché? Eh? Well ... Read More
Rating:  - Great story drowned in syrup
What an opportunity for a great film: the drama, the tragedies, the historical crossroads, the meaning for US history in the state of birth...
I am often opposed to remakes, but this story would deserve a competent serious new version without the cute little Hollywood cliches and without the music that envelops everything in sugar coating.
I am not sure which parts of the tale are historic and which are added by the script writer or Spielberg. I find it hard to believe in John Quincy Hopkins, and if the real man did make this speech, it was a great one and would have deserved to be acted without the horrible sentimental soundtrack. The whole part is such a terrible cliche, it almost does not matter if it is historically correct. The esthetic conventions of inferior Hollywood productions should be banned from serious subjects.
(Was Martin van Buren really this awful as President?)
I would still say, the film is worth watching, but it is so unsatisfactory.
Rating: - amistad
dvd came in very short time, in great condition, and played extremely well, with no skips, interruptions.
Rating: - Hisotical fact over entertainment
Over the years since this film first came out it has received something of a love hate relationship with viewers. Amazon have provided their own review filled with the sneers and sarcasm that have resulted more from critics knee jerk pandering to the masses than serious critical review. Others have pushed the old "political correct" Motive behind the film (For anyone who doesn't know, political correct roughly translates as "Something I disagree with, usually something I deem to be either left wing regardless of whether it is or not)
What should not be taken for granted however is the level of emotion still felt by many African Americans regarding the trans Atlantic slave trade. I first watched this film at a cinema in the United States and can recall (I assume) a black American walking out during the film with tears in his eyes clearly emotionally distressed at what he was seeing (It was during the scene describing the trans Atlantic journey when many were whipped, beaten and the sick thrown overboard.
I seriously doubt however, that Spielburg under estimated the feelings of black Americans and while this film is certainly not of the quality of Schindler's List it certainly isn't ET. To make that kind of comparison is frankly absurd. My guess is Spielberg went for something based loosely on historical fact similar to Saving Private Ryan.
While the argument that the characters may well be one dimensional I assume a previous reviewer did not bother the ... Read More
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