"Amazing Grace"

My brother rented a movie for us to watch about a week ago called “Amazing Grace.” I had not personally heard of the movie, and as have many good movies recently, it flew below my radar, but as I am a big fan of time period movies, this one seemed to be right on the money, and I had pretty high expectations going in. I was not disappointed.

“Amazing grace,” is a story about the terrible time in the history of man where the slave trade was still running rampant across England and America. I’ve always had a pretty good grip on America history of the slave trade on our side of the pond, however I found out very quickly that I had absolutely no knowledge of the history of the slave trade on the other side.

Ioan Gruffudd, (better known as Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four), plays the part of William Wilberforce. William is a member in the British Parliament and over many years continues to try and pass a bill that would abolish the slave trade, but the thousands of people making money hand over fist off of the slave trade block his every effort. In the end William has to resort to some trickery in order to finally get his bill passed. The struggle of trying to make this happens takes a toll not only on his emotions over the years, but also his body as his fights illness, addiction to Laudanum, and even the relationship with one of his life long friends.

When I realized the main character in this movie was “Stretch Man” from Fantastic Four, I almost laughed. I just did not think there was any way Ioan could pull off such a prestigious role. It took only 10 minutes into the movie, and all I could do was applaud. Ioan captured the role of William in every way imaginable, and took it to places I simply did not think was possible.

While director Michael Apted’s list of works is long, I admit that most of his work is foreign to me with the exception of a few select films, however the look of this movie, was enchanting. The story line was thick with meaty performances by almost every actor (to many to list) in the film. I will mention one other fantastic role of John Newton played by Albert Finney. It doesn’t take very long into this wonderful movie to tell that this was not only a daunting task to take on, but also a very controversial topic. The filming was top notch, wardrobe was ridiculously meticulous, and there was not a single time in the movie where I did not feel completely transported back in time.

“Amazing Grace” is not your run of the mill type “Saturday night flick,” but if you are like me, and appreciate a well made historical movie, then this is a must see, if not a buy for your DVD collection film.

My rating for this movie is 8.50 out of 10.00