DVD REVIEW: "Amazing Grace"

Hollywood once really knew how to make a biopic, especially those about men who devoted their lives to great deeds, films like "The Life of Emile Zola," "Wilson," "Madame Curie." I guess Hollywood feels today’s audiences are too cynical for those types of films, so we now have biopics about musicians like Johnny Cash and Ray Charles who, of course, are not related to saints, or whacked-out geniuses like John Nash.

So here comes the British to the rescue with the movie "Amazing Grace," the story of William Wilberforce, who spent decades trying to convince Parliament to abolish the slave trade in Britain. It must be said at the outset that Michael Apted’s biopic of Wilberforce doesn’t tell the man’s entire story; it fails, for instance, to mention that as well as trying to end the slave trade he also tried to get rid of trade unions. In fact, there are those who claimed, with some justification, that Wilberforce cared more about African workers than British ones.

That, however, is a minor quibble in this film that steadfastly pursues Wilberforce’s abolition efforts and does so with the utmost conviction. It is helped by the fact that the film is perfectly cast. Ioan Gruffudd, the Welsh-born actor best known to most movie-goers as Reed Richards in the "Fantastic Four" series, plays Wilberforce with just the right touch of mania to keep him on the human side of sainthood. Benedict Cumberbatch, an actor unknown to me before this film, is absolutely brilliant as Wilberforce’s college buddy William Pitt who eventually becomes prime minister. The scenes between Gruffudd and Cumberbatch sparkle. There’s also a nice turn by Rufus Sewell as a reformer who continues to push Wilberforce toward his goal and Romola Garai, who will to become more familiar to American audiences and a likely Oscar nominee for her role in "Atonement", as the great love of Wilberforce’s life.

There are more familiar names from the school of fine British actors to be seen here. Michael Gambon plays Lord Charles Fox who has a nice speech at the end of the film in which compares Wilberforce to Napoleon and Albert Finney as John Newton, the former captain of a slave ship who sought redemption and in the process wrote the famous hymn that gives this film its title. He has a marvelous moment in the film when he is dictating his biography to a scribe--he has, in fact, become blind but finally does see.

The script by Steven Knight ("Dirty Pretty Things") wisely doesn’t tell the story chronologically; in fact, it leaps back and forth across decades, thus keeping the viewer more involved. One minor mistake however. At oine point Wilberforce, in failing health, seeks refuge in the waters at Bath and says "Why hurry? The waters have been around for a million years." I may be mistaken, but I don’t think the idea of the Earth being that old was a well-accepted theory in the late 18th century.

Apted, who’s probably most well known for his series of "7-Up" documentaries, brings a documentarian’s touch to this film. His scenes on the docks, in the estuaries, on the London streets and in the halls of Parliament actually put me in that time and place.

When Hollywood made those biopics, they trumpeted their arrivals. These were big-budget films with something important to say. "Amazing Grace," on the other hand, sneaked in under the radar. It played at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival and officially opened in the United States without much of a fanfare or promotion back in February. So there’s a good chance you missed when it played at the local multiplex. You shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to see it now that it’s on DVD. This is one for those who believe "They don’t make ‘em like they used to."

GRADE: B