The opening two thirds, guided by a sometime documentarist's eye, aren't bad: this is almost certainly the first multiplex film of this type to have been made by someone who's seen and internalised the work of Peter Watkins and the Brownlow/Mollo Winstanley. (Not unrelated: Greengrass appears to be working on a smaller budget than usual.) We spy traces of Greengrass the skilled tactician at work in the depiction of how networks of resistance are built, a process that in the 14th century was far more haphazard - and far more complicated - than simply clicking on a Facebook group. And familiar faces and names begin to emerge from the prevailing autumnal gloom: Cosmo Jarvis as the farmer-turned-figurehead Wat Tyler, Jamie Bell as the so-called heretic preacher John Ball. Our primary focal point, however, is a young man referred to only as Ploughman. Played by Andrew Garfield, with his soulful, searching gaze and boyband hair, Ploughman enters the gathering throng with the best of intentions and the dictionary definition of legitimate concerns: as we find him, he's just being radicalised by the imposition of the so-called death tax, which obliged family members to pay for the passing of their loved ones, and by the roughing-up of a defenceless woman by the King's goons. Set against the radical Ball and the insurrectionist Tyler, Ploughman can seem a bit Lib Dem, imploring his fellow citizens to send captured noblemen back to their castles and palaces with warning messages, rather than taking an axe to any heads. Yet as the crowd marches on London, Ploughman's function here is mostly that of an observer, spotting the notes of solidarity and fellow-feeling, hearing out shared grievances, registering what happens when the delicate process of dialogue breaks down, bearing witness to the subsequent spiralling of rage, acts of treachery and finally bloodshed. For the most part, The Uprising is the same cautionary tale you were told in secondary school - by teachers themselves trying to ward off potential insurrections - only written slightly larger for the big screen.
As filmed history, it's small-c conservative rather than joltingly radical, but governed by a steadying sobriety and seriousness that steers it some of the way: I wasn't reminded of Python, as some colleagues have been. Cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth shoots in sombre earth tones, capturing individuals getting swallowed up by and lost in frenzied, hollering, pitchfork-wielding mobs, rebels on one side, courtiers (an illustrious cabal: Tom Hollander, Stephen Dillane, Stanley Townsend, Jonny Lee Miller) on the other, a woman and a child (in the form of Woody Norman's Richard II and his etiolated mother Katherine Waterston) somewhere in the middle. Greengrass the reporter beds in among them, keeping an eye out for both the root causes and the murderously illegitimate effects of this revolt. Sure, tear it down, burn it up, leave the EU, if you must; toss your leaders and figureheads out of windows and under a bus. But what are you going to replace those things with? What's your long-term strategy here? Those aren't bad questions for a mass entertainment to be asking in 2026, and they inform the supporting performances to some degree. Jarvis's Tyler is a simple man elevated to prominence after landing a few well-aimed punches; strategically, though, he's soon out of his depth, spending almost the entire second half looking woozy, punch-drunk, historically concussed. (Bell's Ball, meanwhile, resembles Nosferatu in his shaven head and robes.) The Kiwi Thomasin McKenzie, however, feels miscast as a close-cropped Home Counties urchin, seemingly drafted in to make a rugged film less blokey, and this Uprising does finally appear to have been quelled by a slow drip of producers' notes. (Among the less expected names on these credits: Jason Blum, founder of Blumhouse.) For ninety minutes, The Uprising is - contra its title - a mournful, circumspect, quietly admirable pageant, striving to calm us down rather than agitate. Yet towards the end, the tone shifts and the film charges away from its director. Altogether more bullish in its action, the battlefield conclusion is Sealed Knot Ridley Scott, while a frankly silly coda, reframing the Ploughman as a proto-Robin Hood putting the fear of God into the ruling classes, leaves us in the sunlit uplands of historical wish-fulfilment. Greengrass, too, seems to have been worn down into giving the people what they want. It's a pity, but The Uprising has the distinct look of a film on the roots of English resistance cut off at the knees by foreign agitators: in this case, restless test audiences in suburban Californian multiplexes.
The Uprising is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
