A worthy subject, but this is yet another white film about black suffering Amazing Grace (PG) dir: Michael Apted

Conscience and compassion can be important elements in a film; dramatising them is another matter. There is no doubt that Amazing Grace, which depicts William Wilberforce's 18-year battle to outlaw slavery in the British empire, has its heart in the right place. The picture also boasts an unusual structure that flits back and forth between Wilberforce's first stirrings of dissent and the final passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. Yet, despite this, Amazing Grace is the sort of film best watched on the radio.

Wilberforce was only 21 when he was elected to the Commons. Ioan Gruffudd, who plays him, is a decent actor, but one thing he isn't is 21. What should have been the film's key conflict, between idealistic youth and the grizzled experience of the bewigged establishment - including Lord Fox (Michael Gambon) and the Duke of Clarence (Toby Jones) - is undermined by this casting error. Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays William Pitt the Younger, might have been better as Wilberforce, because he has one of those ageless faces that becomes more fascinating the longer you look at it. When he's on screen at the same time as either the marvellously crumpled Jones or Gambon, the hangdog's hangdog, you don't know whom to stare at first.

After Wilberforce is invited by Pitt to take up a political career, he seeks advice from John Newton (Albert Finney), a former slave trader who saw the error of his ways. (Newton wrote the words to the hymn "Amazing Grace", which Gruffudd performs with a vocal quiver worthy of Céline Dion.) Next, the anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson (Rufus Sewell) shows up at Wilberforce's house with the former slave Olaudah Equiano (Youssou N'Dour). The convention is for dinner guests to bring a bottle, but they unpack instead the chains and manacles used to restrain slaves, while recounting stories of ships awash with blood and corpses. More horseradish, anyone?

Amazing Grace follows Wilberforce's repeated efforts to change the law, but the film's focus on him is so narrow that the desire to win becomes disconnected from the subject of slavery, which remains frustratingly abstract. While it is interesting that the film-makers have chosen to convey the slaves' ordeal through words and intimation rather than images, the disadvantage of this approach is that it's like listening to the minutes of an obscure meeting. Any scenes that come to life refer to the main theme only tangentially. The writer, Steven Knight, has come up with a delicious introductory exchange between Wilberforce and his future wife, Barbara Spooner (Romola Garai), in which they discover that they agree on every political point except one - Wilberforce believes he should stop raising the subject of slavery when his bill gets defeated, whereas Barbara urges him to persist. Not long after, she is seen resting a hand on her pregnant belly, which just proves how stimulating such debate can be.

Wilberforce is given a tour of an empty slave ship and later entreats his guests to inhale the stench of death on the vessel, but the director, Michael Apted, finds no equivalent means of connecting with his own audience. Apted is no slouch when it comes to portraying everyday struggles. His best work is in the ongoing documentary series that began in 1964 with 7 Up. Equally, he has done a good job of locating the human essence in extraordinary figures, from Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner's Daughter) and Dian Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist) to James Bond (The World Is Not Enough). But, alas, not in this case.

One problem is that the film falls prey to many of the clichés of historical drama. Characters are introduced with lines such as: "Look, here comes William Wilberforce, the most committed abolitionist in England." And the benefit of hindsight is imposed incongruously on the action, as in when the Duke of Clarence's racist language meets with outraged music on the soundtrack. Such disapproval is understandable enough, but it would be easier to take if Amazing Grace didn't add to the current glut of white films about black suffering.

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