Amistad. What an excellent movie. I saw it years ago, but ran across it tonight on regular TV, and happened to catch it from the beginning.
It gives life to the notion that the anti-slavery contingency of our founding fathers intentionally placed the mechanisms for the abolition of slavery into the constitution for future generations to deal with the issue when the nation was mature enough to deal with it.
Excellent performances all around, particularly from Djimon Hounsou, playing the abducted African. And a special nod to Sir Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams invoking the founding generation, arguing on behalf of freedom before a supreme court stacked 7-2 with Southern slave-owners. Matthew McConeghey and Morgan Freeman also turn in excellent performances, as do the rest of the cast.
At one point, the Black man on trial is conversing with John Quincy Adams through a translator, and explains that in times of great need, his people call upon their ancestors and believe that they are with them, knowing that in his defining moment, HE is the sole reason for them having existed at all. In what is surely artistic license, that exchange is a dawning moment for John Quincy Adams, as the viewer is coaxed to draw the obvious parallel.
Oh, and it's a Spielberg film.