The Uprising (2026) Focus/Action-Drama RT: 128 minutes Rated R (violence/bloody images) Director: Paul Greengrass Screenplay: Paul Greengrass Music: Volker Bertelmann Cinematography: Pal Ulvik Rokseth Release date: September 10, 2026 (US) Cast: Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Katherine Waterston, Stanley Townsend, Gerard Tyler, Simon Kunz, Sky Yang.
Rating: **
The summer movie season is officially over for another year. It’s time to get serious with all the Oscar hopefuls opening in the next few months. Sadly, the season isn’t off to a good start with the dull, plodding historical drama The Uprising. It’s about as interesting as a lecture on the subject by the teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
And what is the subject of The Uprising you may ask? It’s ostensibly about the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England. But like many a cinematic iteration of a real-life historical event, it plays fast and loose with the facts in order to make it more…. well, cinematic. I wish writer-director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy) had tried to make it interesting instead.
Andrew Garfield (After the Hunt) plays a totally made-up character known only as Ploughman. That actually has basis in fact as people in medieval times were often known more by their profession than their name. He’s a farmer so…. Anyway, he’s the guy that leads the revolt against King Richard II (Norman, The Last Voyage of the Demeter), a disturbed young teen ruled by a council of older men. The kingdom needs money so it’s decided to levy more taxes against the peasants who are barely getting by as it is. Everybody’s had enough, but it’s Ploughman who strikes the first blow against tyranny. Soon, he’s leading an army to London to confront the king on his own turf.
The Uprising goes wrong in so many areas; it’s tough to know where to begin. To be fair, it’s not terrible; it’s just listless and detached. It doesn’t even care enough to take the time to develop the story it wants to tell or the characters involved. It rushes through the introductory scenes giving us just a perfunctory explanation of the politics that motivated the uprising before zipping through the main character’s rise from simple farmer to rebel leader.
Greengrass also fumbles with character development. He introduces real-life figures like radical priest John Ball (Bell, Rocketman) and Wat Tyler (Jarvis, Shogun), the actual leader of the Revolt, without really explaining their importance. Female rebel Alyce (McKenzie, Jojo Rabbit) doesn’t get much attention either save for a scene where she tries to connect with Ploughman over losing loved ones in the recent pandemic (i.e. The Black Plague). After a while, I was just making distinctions between the rebels and the king’s men.
Medieval-set movies like The Uprising frequently rely on battle sequences to sink or swim. Unfortunately, Greengrass drops the ball completely here. The fight scenes are poorly edited and underlit to the point of night blindness. The only time things come to something resembling life is the climactic battle at Smithfield. It’s preceded by a cliched sequence of Ploughman trying to get to his people in time to warn them they’re walking into a trap. He keeps shouting, “It’s a trap!” like he’s in a Star Wars movie. Where’s Obi-Wan when you really need him?
It’s not enough that The Uprising is boring. The director takes it an extra step into ludicrous territory with an epilogue suggesting a connection with Robin Hood. Excuse me, but WTF?! I have no words. This is right up there with the end of The Last Legion (2007). Remember that one? It tries to make a connection between the Roman Empire and the legend of King Arthur. I’m still chuckling over that one.
The best things about The Uprising are the costumes and set design. They feel completely authentic to 14th century England. They imbue the film with a sense of realism not often found in big Hollywood productions which this is not. I don’t have an exact figure, but you can tell The Uprising isn’t one of those $100M productions. Whatever Greengrass had to work with, he put it to good use. It’s too bad that’s all he accomplished.
I wouldn’t say The Uprising is an excruciating experience, but I took no pleasure from it either. I felt like it should have come to life more than it did. That’s what an effective historical drama is supposed to do, bring history to life. It fails in this area. It’s sluggish and clearly disinterested in its own subject. I couldn’t even get interested in the many parallels to the state of the country today. Oh come on, don’t tell me you can’t see it? A country still reeling from a pandemic. The deranged leader taxing the poor while giving breaks to the wealthy. It’s so obvious! Yeah, that didn’t move me either. The whole enterprise is just hollow. I see zero Oscar noms for this one.
