Time of Chaos

...shores, where the Africans are imprisoned and forced to stand trial...

...Like the opening revolt, which takes place in darkness interspersed with flashes of lightning, Cinque's story is told allusively, with far less grounding in quotidian detail than the drama of the white lawyers...

...Amistad's ideas of righteousness, again like those in Schindler's List, depend entirely upon the benevolent actions of liberal forces in the seats of power...

...The result is a film that drains itself of controversy at the expense of the Africans' personal and cultural integrity...

...The legal issues raised by the prisoners' defense lawyer (Matthew McConaughey), who proposes to free his clients on technicalities, are fascinating...

...Spielberg seems bent on keeping the Africans at arm's length from the audience...

...The Boxer doesn't either...

...One of the film's best scenes comes toward the beginning: The prisoners' arraignment is interrupted by the slave owners, the U.S...

...But none of Amistad's finer details pertain to the prisoners...

...In Tamango, the 1957 film that also centered on a rebellion aboard a slave ship, director John Berry solved the problem by making the African characters as complex and as flawed as their captors...

...The movie takes time as well to unpack the troubling idealism of John Quincy Adams, whose Abolitionist leanings do not prevent him from keeping a black servant in his house...

...His early scenes with Watson, where they hardly speak to one another, are fraught with romantic energy...

...It depicted the Irish Republican Army in simplistic blackand-white terms, without ever exploring the intricacies of its characters' political identities...

...Yet he too remains mysterious until the middle of the film, when the narrative comes to a screeching halt in order to delve into his background...

...Director Jim Sheridan, writer Terry George and star Daniel Day-Lewis are the team responsible for In the Name of the Father, amovielfound hollow and false...

...The two begin to sponsor boxing nights, the first nonsectarian events held in the city for decades...

...If nothing else, Amistad proves that Spielberg loves to back a winning horse...

...In addition, while Americans who are contemptuous of the slaves are presented as despicable creatures, their personalities and motivations are open and clear...

...For the first 30 minutes their language is not translated, although all the Spanish dialogue is accompanied by subtitles...

...The silly Hollywood moment (which drew applause from the audience) is forgivable because of what happens next: Maggie and Danny resolve to stay in the city and continue their fight for peace...

...Martin Scorsese's Kundun confronts the customs andbeliefs of a Tibetan culture head on, immersing itself in their strangeness...

...Flynn also renews a romance with Hamill's daughter, Maggie (Emily Watson...

...It begins with an IRA cease-fire and the efforts of its local leader Joe Hamill (Brian Cox) to keep order in the streets of Belfast...

...He was awarded his only Oscars for a film of triumph and redemption about the Holocaust...

...Day-Lewis, superficial and flat in flashier roles, here turns in his subtlest performance...

...In a particularly painful scene, we see how deeply the whole situation has affected even young Liam...

...Fighting his first match for the Holy Family Boxing Club, Danny is losing badly when a spectator quips, "Flynn should get the Nobel Peace Prize for boxing...

...It seems logical that he would gravitate toward an antebellum slave narrative that had a happy ending...

...Although the script has been attacked for its histrionic dialogue, and is indeed far better in its quieter moments, it has wit...

...The next day the judge rules in favor of the captives, proving that the spirit of his religion is stronger than his politics...

...We never learn why Danny Flynn (Day-Lewis) joined the militant organization...

...Justice is done, the imprisoned are freed, and the New Jerusalem lies just around the corner...

...Much of their hostility is directed at Flynn, who now disdains their politics and at the same time insults them on a personal level by threatening to run off with the wife of their comrade...

...Or why, after 14 years in prison, he has returned determined to stop IRA violence...

...During the first trial, President Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne), angling for re-election, decides that the prisoners must lose their case...

...Artists who set out to depict a foreign culture must decide how to make it comprehensible to their audience...

...military and petitioners from the Spanish government, all of whom insist they have the right to seize the "goods" standing before the judge...

...The last moments of the film are almost wholly celebratory, with Cinque expressing his gratitude to the Americans who have freed him...

...Shots of the judge in church praying for wisdom are intercut with a scene showing a friend of Cinque's deciphering the story of Jesus from the pictures in an illustrated bible...

...But after so much rejoicing, learning from a closing statement on the screen that Cinque returned home to find his wife and child sold into slavery cannot redeem Amistad's reductive, selfcongratulatory tone...

...The Boxer dramatizes the impossibility of keeping order within an organization created to destroy authority...

...Liam, of course, lashes out not because he understands the motives of the lieutenants, but because he fears Danny will take his mother away from him...

...The filmmakers are savvy enough to add a final note of tragedy to the story...

...Spielberg, perhaps worried that either of these methods might alienate American audiences, chooses instead to represent his Africans as noble savages, even though this reinforces racial prejudices still alive in contemporary American society...

...A few sequences set in London offer a jejune satire of the gorgeous and inhuman British upper class, but the movie's Irish scenes are compromised just once: Shortly before the end, several of the film's belligerents experience a sudden and inexplicable change of heart...

...The sole prisoner allowed any real personality is Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), who becomes the leader and spokesman...

...the black characters, like most of the captive Jews in Spielberg's Schindler's Lisi, are a faceless mob, barely distinguishable from one another...

...If there is ever to be a resolution to the hostilities in Northern Ireland, we recognize, the burden of bringing it about must be borne by people like Maggie and Danny, who are prepared to remain in the ring whatever the cost...

...He replaces the sitting judge with a devout Catholic who feels allegiance to Isabella II (Anna Paquin), the Spanish monarch who wishes the captives returned to her country...

...Watson, who was brilliant in last year's Breaking the Waves, matches both his quiet reserve and his secret longing...

...On Screen TIMES OF CHAOS By Raphael Shargel Based on events that transpired in 1839-40, Steven Spielberg's Amistad concerns a group of African captives aboard a Spanish vessel who break their bonds, take over the ship and demand to be returned to their homeland...

...In the process, the souls of Cinque and his friend are wiped clean...

...Missionary work has never been easier: Scripture in hand, the infidels convert themselves...

...I admit I came to The Boxer with a chip on my shoulder...

...Hamill truly wants to negotiate with the British, but his lieutenants, furious about their fellows who have not been released from jail, are champing at the bit, clamoring for blood...

...The film juggles three plots, integrating them beautifully...

...We see Belfast as a place where hope and despair, fury and love, vengeance and compassion walk hand-in-hand...

...It is the most sophisticated and moving of the recent IRA films, and one of the outstanding movies of 1997...

...While he was in prison she married another IRA member, a friend of his who is still incarcerated, and had a son, Liam (Ciaran Fitzgerald...

...The love talk of Danny and Maggie does sound trite at times, but it is straightforward and earnest, a refreshing antidote to the elliptical and empty romances unfolding in most other films of the season...

...But crew members navigate it to U.S...

...Meanwhile, Flynn, rejecting the advice of his old friends, returns home and with the help of Ike Weir (Ken Stott), his former trainer, sets up a boxing ring in a nearby gym...

...What makes The Boxer a rare achievement, however, is its capturing the intense conflicts of living in an urban war zone...

...It is a reference to events rather than a careful portrayal of them...

...As he tells the tale of his life in Africa, of his abduction by a neighboring tribe, and of his passage into slavery, his words fade and we are treated to a series of images that summarize his plight—most of them reminiscent of the first episode of Roots...

...Nevertheless, The Boxer succeeds where Amistad fails: It forces us to sympathize with the characters on different sides of the political debate, uncovering the human agonies that flare up in an environment of internecine fighting...

...But lest Spielberg appear sour on Catholicism, he inserts a maudlin sequence that takes place the night before the verdict is to be handed down...

...He really earns the words of passion that later pour out of him...

...This is a gripping story that Spielberg and screenwriter David Franzoni fill with intriguing complexities...

...When their case reaches the Supreme Court John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), emerging from retirement, mounts a successful defense and they are given passage home...

...During a riot instigated by the lieutenants, he takes advantage of the chaos to burn down Danny's gym...