{"id":15016,"date":"2026-09-12T00:58:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T04:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=15016"},"modified":"2026-09-12T00:58:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T04:58:46","slug":"the-uprising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/09\/12\/the-uprising\/","title":{"rendered":"The Uprising"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Uprising<\/strong> (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Action-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 128 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence\/bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Paul Greengrass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Paul Greengrass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Volker Bertelmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Pal Ulvik Rokseth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 10, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: **<\/p>\n

\u00a0The summer movie season is officially over for another year. It\u2019s time to get serious with all the Oscar hopefuls opening in the next few months. Sadly, the season isn\u2019t off to a good start with the dull, plodding historical drama The Uprising<\/strong>. It\u2019s about as interesting as a lecture on the subject by the teacher from Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off.<\/p>\n

\u00a0And what is the subject of The Uprising<\/strong> you may ask? It\u2019s ostensibly about the 1381 Peasants\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Andrew 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\u2019s a farmer so…. Anyway, he\u2019s 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\u2019s decided to levy more taxes against the peasants who are barely getting by as it is. Everybody\u2019s had enough, but it\u2019s Ploughman who strikes the first blow against tyranny. Soon, he\u2019s leading an army to London to confront the king on his own turf.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Uprising<\/strong> goes wrong in so many areas; it\u2019s tough to know where to begin. To be fair, it\u2019s not terrible; it\u2019s just listless and detached. It doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s rise from simple farmer to rebel leader.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Greengrass 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\u2019t 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\u2019s men.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Medieval-set movies like The Uprising<\/strong> 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\u2019s preceded by a cliched sequence of Ploughman trying to get to his people in time to warn them they\u2019re walking into a trap. He keeps shouting, \u201cIt\u2019s a trap!\u201d like he\u2019s in a Star Wars movie. Where\u2019s Obi-Wan when you really need him?<\/p>\n

\u00a0It\u2019s not enough that The Uprising<\/strong> 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\u2019m still chuckling over that one.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The best things about The Uprising<\/strong> are the costumes and set design. They feel completely authentic to 14th<\/sup> century England. They imbue the film with a sense of realism not often found in big Hollywood productions which this is not. I don\u2019t have an exact figure, but you can tell The Uprising<\/strong> isn\u2019t one of those $100M productions. Whatever Greengrass had to work with, he put it to good use. It\u2019s too bad that\u2019s all he accomplished.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wouldn\u2019t say The Uprising<\/strong> 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\u2019s what an effective historical drama is supposed to do, bring history to life. It fails in this area. It\u2019s sluggish and clearly disinterested in its own subject. I couldn\u2019t even get interested in the many parallels to the state of the country today. Oh come on, don\u2019t tell me you can\u2019t see it? A country still reeling from a pandemic. The deranged leader taxing the poor while giving breaks to the wealthy. It\u2019s so obvious! Yeah, that didn\u2019t move me either. The whole enterprise is just hollow. I see zero Oscar noms for this one.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Uprising (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Action-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 128 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence\/bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Paul Greengrass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Paul Greengrass\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Volker Bertelmann\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Pal Ulvik Rokseth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: September 10, 2026 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/The-Uprising-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15016"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15021,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15016\/revisions\/15021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}