User Reviews

Oh dear! Why do they do it? Why do they change history when history is already a dramatic and awful story? The movie falls into the usual trap of trying to be politically correct and a good example is the scene showing peaceful Africans apparently attending the village fête with song contests and wrestling and happy go lucky natives dancing and having fun...before being pillaged and kidnapped and murdered by evil white men on a slaving raid. Unfortunately this has little, if anything, to do with reality and common sense! The implicit racism presumes that white men were more intelligent and cunning and could survive better in this unfamiliar land than the childlike natives who were born there! Absolute nonsense! The slave coast was densely populated with warlike tribes who were well armed (admittedly with European guns) and who spent much of their time raiding and pillaging and enslaving each other. We know as historical fact that most slave ships trading on the coast consisted of crews of less than 30 seamen many of whom quickly became ill and were likely to die of disease if they spent any length of time in one of the unhealthiest climates on the planet which was totally alien to them! The ugly reality of history is that the vast majority of slaves that left the coast were bought from Africans who willingly sold them! The true evil of the slave trade is that white Europeans created the demand that ensured the largest diaspora and ultimately, murder of peoples in history, and it disrupted and destroyed almost the entire African continent. The effects of the evil trade are still being felt in Africa today. If you're going to spend money making a movie about an historical figure who certainly had an interesting and moving story...at least tell it honestly, show the ugly face of slavery, whether by black or white people, and stop perpetuating myths taught at school to kindergärtners!