Director: Paul Greengrass
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Katherine Waterston
Screenplay: Paul Greengrass
127 mins. Rated R for violence/bloody images.

Robin Hood doesn’t work so well in film. There’s a reason that most consider the best Robin Hood film to be the one that lampoons the character in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. They are often forgotten and they don’t perform particularly well, so Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips) has attempted a difficult feat in showcasing the historical tale that inspired the fictional character, a story that feels so authentic to today and the societal inequality that…certainly…seems familiar.

It’s 1381, and England is facing the aftermath of the Black Death that eliminated half the population. The people are poor and in grief, and the young King Richard II’s council has imposed a new round of raised taxes. When confronted with further loss, a ploughman (Andrew Garfield, The Social Network) rises up, inspiring hundreds, and eventually thousands, to follow as they confront the King in order to make their pleas heard.

Greengrass has a knack for experiential cinema, placing the viewer in the thick of the conflict with a documentary style of photography that is more focused on the feeling of being embedded in a dangerous situation more than the characters or larger story, and while I don’t love his use of shaky cam, especially in a historical setting, after a few minutes, the immersion was strong enough to overtake the faults of the shaky cam style. If you are here for characters and deeply detailed plot, The Uprising is not for you. If you want to be put into an intense and relatable situation, The Uprising is incredibly effective.

Andrew Garfield is terrific as the lead character, an unnamed ploughman who is mad as hell and not going to take this anymore. Garfield consistently surprises with his abilities to play a wide spectrum of characters with ease. Through the simple visual storytelling of his farming exhaustion and a few small wooden crosses adorning three grave sites, Greengrass gives enough motivation to fuel his palpable anger. He’s matched here with the always effective Tom Hollander (Bohemian Rhapsody) as the voice of the King’s council and Jonny Lee Miller (Trainspotting) as London’s mayor and leader of the merchants who can offer support to the council…for the right amount of coin. Katherine Waterston (Babylon) also shines as Joan of Kent, mother to the King and a clearly capable leader who now holds little power or sway in official matters.

The Uprising has a very unusual momentum that leads to a few pacing issues as it moves along. I was never really sure where it was heading from scene to scene and a few sequences felt like climaxes long before the actual climax. It’s not that this is a bad thing, but it makes the trajectory of the story a little difficult to keep up with, but it also led to a number of shocking surprises and reveals that floored me.

The Uprising won’t have me thinking the layered characters or the deep details of the story by year’s end, but Greengrass’s film is incredibly exciting and visually intense, placing me in the middle of the action and not giving any direction as to how to feel (but c’mon, we know why this film is so timely), and in a year of EAT THE RICH cinema, The Uprising more than earns its place. While the director’s style doesn’t aid a historical film like this, it’s a more-than-timely piece that should anger a lot of viewers…in the best way.

3½/5
-Kyle A. Goethe