Amazing Grace review – blazing Hannah Walters struggles to save a lonely caller at the end of his tether

While working for a helpline one night, counsellor Grace (a terrific Hannah Walters) gets a call from Walter (Daniel P Lewis, also the film’s screenwriter), an isolated working-class man beset by trauma and loneliness who is contemplating killing himself. Grace quickly ascertains that Walter is in profound emotional distress, and although he keeps hanging up on her when her probing questions become too painful, he also keeps calling back until he feels safe enough to speak about the root causes of his anguish and accept help. However, other factors threaten to destabilise Walter’s fragile recovery as the violence that’s always been a part of his life erupts once again.

Even if you didn’t read up on any of the background to this intimate, microscale drama, you’d be likely to suss while watching that it’s a labour of love for some of the cast and crew, perhaps born of a desire to show people in pain that there is help out there for them. That manifest sincerity and altruistic intent is so strongly palpable here that it somewhat wards off negative criticism, but it has to be admitted that the film does have its weaknesses. For a start, confining the action to Grace and Walter’s conversations and then observing how he reacts increasingly self-destructively after each talk means we follow a repetitive cycle of confession-reaction rinse-and-repeat. Lewis’s performance is dialled up to the max from the start, so it doesn’t have anywhere to go over the long haul. Added to which, the film keeps cutting away to somewhat strident flashbacks to explain what happened to him, instead of letting the revelations emerge through speech.

That said, only the stoniest hearted could not feel empathy for Walter and Grace’s pain, wounds from experiences that are all too common and all too little spoken of by men in particular. Director Ruth Carney and her production design and props team deserve all the plaudits for the exceedingly detailed creation of Walter’s house, every knick-knack and doodad of which tells the viewer something about this inarticulate man’s backstory – as does all the unopened mail, unwashed dishes and unmade beds.