Cinque, the rebel leader, is played by former model Hounsou, a mountainous figure who speaks in a gutteral roar and seems to embody the rage and confusion of an entire exploited continent.

Russell Smith

Austin Chronicle

There's some excellent comedy early on involving the mutual incomprehension of Africans and Americans, though this eventually gives way to solemn, ethnocentric mush about one African's reading of the story of Jesus, demonstrating as usual that sustained subtlety is hardly Spielberg's forte.

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Chicago Reader

What is most valuable about Amistad is the way it provides faces and names for its African characters, whom the movies so often make into faceless victims.

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times