Amazing Grace: Critic Reviews

It leaves the blood unstirred.

Amazing Grace, a prettified take on the life and times of the 18th-century reformer William Wilberforce, carries a strong whiff of piety. It isn't a bad smell; there are notes of roses and treacle in the mix, but also elements of sweat and pain.

A decent cast under Michael Apted's direction does its best, but it's dull, naive and dramatically inert.

As written by Steven Knight, it seems so taken with Wilberforce's moral magnificence, it forgets to involve the audience, too.

It's a doughty movie, stuck halfway between Masterpiece Theatre and Classics Illustrated.

Michael Apted's compelling and highly informative Amazing Grace is an apt celebration of America's Black History Month, even though its story takes place in England.

Amazing Grace is a case of good works done well...[an] admirable historical drama.

Director Michael Apted tells the story with dry devotion to parliamentary procedurals and a worshipful approach to Wilberforce. But [actor] Gruffudd lacks the intensity and charisma to pull it off.

I'm sure [director] Apted meant well, but Amazing Grace comes across as a surprisingly graceless biopic narrowed down to one white man's uncomfortable burden.

Michael Apted's Amazing Grace is a beautifully chiseled blunt instrument. No, it's not subtle, but how subtle was slavery?

As square as this movie is, it has been made with eloquence and jaunty high spirits, and it tells a good story that is virtually unknown here.

The film is inspiring. When Wilberforce finally achieves victory, Lord Fox makes a speech, in which the opening words, sadly, still ring true today: 'When people think of great men, rarely do they think of peaceful men.'

The rhythms [director Michael Apted and editor Rick Shaine] establish are jumpy and unsteady, afraid of allowing a scene to breathe and flow naturally. If the script were more alive, these matters of visual technique would matter less. But not much less.

Screenwriter Steven Knight gracefully articulates the many domestic and international forces at work.

A stirring and still relevant political drama with a stellar cast.

Amazing Grace is the stuff of great lessons and inspiration and hope, and if it's all delivered with a bit too much moral push, well, moral push apparently was what William Wilberforce was all about. There's another word for such dweebs: Heroes.

Michael Apted's Amazing Grace, from a screenplay by Steven Knight, turns out to be blessed with inspirational nobility and comic eccentricity to bring it to emotional fruition.

A workmanlike costumer that distills Blighty's long battle for the abolition of slavery and the personalities behind landmark antislavery legislation into a tidy story of conscience and perseverance.

Amazing Grace isn't quite an accurate title for this entertaining history lesson, but no one will ever write a song titled 'Amazing 20-Year Period of Parliamentary Maneuvering to End Britain's Role in the Slave Trade.'

Amazing Grace arrives Hollywood-slick, a polished British period piece. It manipulates, but then again, so does the song that gives it its title. Movies, like hymns and history, should give us a good cry.

It is to be hoped that Amazing Grace is not the only, or the last, cinematic celebration of 200th anniversary of abolition, for there are more stories to tell, more imaginatively.

So much to admire and so little to amaze.

[Apted's] picture, openhearted and enthusiastic, is partly an ode to Wilberforce and partly a love letter to the simple act of taking action.

Apted is without a doubt one of the foremost documentarians working today. His Up Series represents a cinematic hallmark. His feature credits are less certain.

The political maneuverings are of some historical interest, but modern relevancy is hard to find.