Here is a disappointing review in today's Wall Street Journal by Charlotte Allen, editor for Beliefnet.com.
Nowadays it is all too common--and not only in Hollywood--to assume that conservative Christian belief and a commitment to social justice are incompatible. Wilberforce's embrace of both suggests that this divide is a creation of our own time and, so to speak, sinfully wrong-headed. Unfortunately director Apted, as he recently told Christianity Today magazine, decided to play down Wilberforce's religious convictions--that would be too "preachy," he said--and instead turned his story into a yarn of political triumph. The film's original screenwriter, Colin Welland, who wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed and unabashedly Christian "Chariots of Fire," was replaced.
The movie "Amazing Grace" nods occasionally in the direction of granting a role to faith in social reform, but it would do us all well to supplement our time in the movie theater by doing some reading about the heroic and amazing Christian who was the real William Wilberforce.
Read the whole review, which seeks to rectify this imbalance.
I'd highly recommend John Piper's Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce (which you can purchase from DG or read online for free). I've also just started reading the longer biography, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas.
(HT: Denny Burk)
Update: Here is a new review of the film from Christianity Today.
