An old-school screen biography (or hagiography) of the English abolitionist, William Wilberforce, who spearheaded the anti-slavery movement in Parliament from the late 18th Century to the early 19th, a long, slow struggle against the forces of entrenched economics. On the virtuous side of every issue -- in favor of free education, opposed to animal cruelty -- and an eligible bachelor to boot (and in Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, a broodingly handsome one), he is obviously a man we should be better acquainted with, and in that sense the movie performs a public service. The higher sense in which a movie may perform a public service, however, is by being a good movie; and a right-minded one about such a clear-cut and long-established right is apt to lack a little something in tension. To have dramatized this story in, say, 1807 would have been a different matter. From two centuries' distance, it plays as not so much a drama as a ceremony, a consecration, appropriately culminating in an on-screen standing ovation, followed by an editorial eulogy, followed by a sitting ovation. Under the experienced directorial hand of Michael Apted, the movie is well dressed and well decorated and well acted (Michael Gambon, Ciarán Hinds, Albert Finney, Bill Paterson, Rufus Sewell, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch), and yet the "artfully" faded image looks all too literally like the ashes of time. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd