Reviews

I was quite impressed with this film, mostly for the incredible strides forward it made in portraying the horrors of the slave trade and horrific abuse of the kidnapped and enslaved Africans. The epic miniseries Roots, two decades later, and Spielberg's Amistad some 40 years after this film offer more detail and arguably higher production values, but Tamango is well worth watching, especially for those keen on either film or world history. Like another reviewer, I found the acting a little flat, despite the presence of the talented Curd Jurgens and Dorothy Dandridge. But the performances of all were engaging enough for me to want to stick with it to see the resolution of the conflicts. I was also very impressed to see the relationship between CJ's and DD's characters, at a time in the US when white mobs were trying to prevent children of different colors from going to school together, and a decade before the US Loving case forced states to accept marriages between people of different colors.

With all the potent ingredients in this story, including racial conflict in the South just after WWII, this film was sadly bland, tepid, cautious, weak, likely fearful of offending anyone. I assume it was limited by the production company, as a more daring script might not have found a home on the network that ran it. But seriously, given the setting, not a single white person, even the obviously drunk and/or bigoted ones, ever uses the n-word? I dislike that word myself, but pretending that people in that time and place never used it rather hurts the credibility of a period piece. The actors did the best they could with their material, especially Ms Erbe. I'd love to see a more realistic version by either a bolder network or for theatrical release. Alas.