This year, December is the month for major studio film releases driven by the ego and hit-making power of high-profile directors. On Christmas Day, Quentin Tarantino attempts to overcome the "junior slump" with his Elmore Leonard adaptation, "Jackie Brown." On December 19, James Cameron will finally unveil his $260 million dollar disaster...um, make that disaster FILM, "Titanic." And on December 13, Steven Spielberg released his second film of 1997, the "serious" complement to his summer hit "The Lost World," "Amistad." Here's hoping that Cameron and Tarantino have more to offer than Spielberg does.

As the product of a dominating powerhouse director, the credit or blame for "Amistad" can be placed almost exclusively on Spielberg's shoulders. Since this also happens to be his first film created exclusively for his new studio, Dreamworks SKG (which he runs alongside fellow Hollywood A-listers Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen), the pressure and expectations are exponentially increased. Were Spielberg the kind of man prone to sweating, I'm sure he would have done plenty of it late last week. Somehow, I suspect he doesn't sweat much, which is precisely the problem with all of his recent films, especially "Amistad."

The man doesn't know how to take RISKS anymore. Instead of maintaining the standards of his late seventies and eighties work, when he was the master of surprise and invention, Spielberg has become a master of the obvious. In his nineties work, no emotion or response is left to the audience; each is carefully programmed into a film's text through careful manipulation of the film language. When one is dealing with a juiced-up summer blockbuster like "The Lost World," programming in plenty of "oohs," "ahhs," and even an "EEK!" or two is expected. But in applying the same directing style to "Amistad," Spielberg has committed a huge artistic error.

"Amistad" is crammed full of obvious "Oscar shots" engineered to elicit emotions from audiences and tiny gasps from award nominating bodies across the nation. From the fake tension of the opening sequence chronicling the mutiny aboard the slave ship to the visual motifs that are hammered into a viewer's eyeballs time and again, "Amistad" approaches its story and subject with all the subtlety of a jackhammer in a church.

As a result, Spielberg for the first time in his career actually succeeds in becoming the biggest obstacle between his film and its emotional impact on an audience. Even the score by John Williams, a composer who has shown equal brilliance in creating both memorable movie music and movie music so understated as to be unnoticeable, is pushed overboard into overscoring the film. For example, the climactic courtroom speech by Anthony Hopkins features wall-to-wall music that is a tremendous distraction from the power of Hopkins' performance.

In the end, it is Hopkins and the male lead of the picture, newcomer Djimon Hounsou, who make "Amistad" worth experiencing at all. Hounsou is amazingly powerful and confident in his feature film debut, embodying the kind of presence in his first movie that other actors may take decades to establish. It's an especially remarkable performance considering that he speaks only three words of English in the entire film. His work is done entirely in the dialect of his character's tribe in Africa, placing all of the role's burden onto Hounsou's screen presence and physicality. He does an amazing job with his role. As for Hopkins, his work as elder statesman John Quincy Adams is nothing short of remarkable. The film's climax is an eleven-minute speech delivered by Adams to the U.S. Supreme Court, and it's a stunning piece of acting work.

The best moments in "Amistad," like Hopkins's courtroom speech and Hounsou's description of his life before his kidnapping in Africa, are powerful not because of Spielberg, but in spite of him. Though some performances fall flat, especially the work done by Morgan Freeman and David Paymer, there is some amazing acting at the heart of this movie that elevates many scenes past the manipulative, shameless directing tricks of Spielberg. If "Amistad" is worth seeing at all, it's because of the performances of tremendous actors like Hounsou and Hopkins, not because of the blatant Oscar grandstanding of a director who has distorted the subtlety in his work beyond recognition.