Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace is a British-American drama about William Wilberforce, a young member of Parliament in late eighteenth-century England who takes up the cause of abolishing the slave trade. Wilberforce is torn between a life in politics and a life devoted to his religious faith, until his friend William Pitt, later prime minister, suggests he pursue both by fighting slavery from his seat in the Commons. His commitment brings him into conflict with powerful interests that profit from the trade, and the campaign he leads stretches over many years. A meeting with the former slave Olaudah Equiano and the encouragement of his mentor, the clergyman John Newton, help sustain him, as does his marriage to Barbara Spooner.

Michael Apted directed the film, the sixteenth of the nineteen features listed in his filmography, following Enough and preceding The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Steven Knight wrote the screenplay, and the producers included Edward R. Pressman, Patricia Heaton and Terrence Malick. Ioan Gruffudd plays Wilberforce, with Romola Garai as Barbara Spooner, Benedict Cumberbatch as Pitt, Albert Finney as Newton, Michael Gambon as Lord Charles Fox and Rufus Sewell as Thomas Clarkson. The film took about 32 million dollars worldwide.

On TMDB it holds a rating of 6.9 out of 10 from 332 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 6.6 out of 10 from 125 reviews, a fairly narrow gap between the two.