Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...that he neglects to actually personify the evil at hand. With forced and belabored "filmmaking," he painfully portrays the anguished and horrid plight of the Africans so as to equate any and all adversaries they might have, whether they be Spanish slave traders, greedy British sailors or the American legal system--which he only later in the movie realizes is actually defending them. His treatment seems to raise a long, accusatory finger at somebody, but doesn't make clear who, so that while nobody is actually defending slavery during the body of the movie, the audience comes away with...
McConaughey's lawyer wins his case before a series of judges and succeeds in having the slaves declared not the legal property of Spain and instead free. But President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne) intervenes so as to appease the pro-slavery South, and the case eventually goes to the Supreme Court. Former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) comes out of retirement to argue the case in that historic venue...
...characters in the movie, let alone the audience, certainly don't need the guilt Spielberg tries to foist upon someone, anyone, with this sequence, especially since the cruelty of the slave trade is never at issue in any of the trials. As soon as the Africans start having legal difficulties, the film shifts to make a sham out of the American judicial system. The very framework which winds up championing the Africans' cause with morality and persuasiveness is portrayed, in turn, as incompetent, overly bureaucratic and corrupt, to further sympathy for the Africans. The audience was so drowned in their...
...first tendency was to nail this guy to the wall. But I didn't want to say anything that would go on the record about him that could hurt Bailey later," Ocon says, recalling those days when she was living on welfare and independently researching legal precedents for her case...
...jerk that the newspapers made him out to be. He had every legal and moral right to think that it was in Bailey's interest to stay with him," Paul Ocon says. "But I don't think he was really mature enough to handle the responsibilities of being a father...