The Uprising

The year is 1381. Plague has killed half the population, grief and hardship engulf the survivors, and it’s only halfway through the Hundred Years’ War, which has bankrupted the state. Afraid of angering the wealthy, the crooked council of boy king Richard II tax the common people, stealing from the poor to prop up the rich. 

The peasants are stretched to breaking point – and when a grieving ploughman (Andrew Garfield) snaps, he sparks an uprising that unites the peasantry, joining rabble-rousers John Ball (Jamie Bell) and Wat Tyler (Shōgun’s Cosmo Jarvis) to march on London and demand a new deal from the king. ‘All will be well once the poison of wealth is removed,’ one of the marchers tells the man known only as ‘the Ploughman’, a kind of outlaw who wears a hooded tabard in the sort of green you might find in Lincoln… now wait a second?

Yes, as revealed extremely late into the US marketing campaign, The Uprising is kind of a Robin Hood origin story, and subtitling it (as the US did) ‘The Rise of Robin Hood’ is a little like subtitling the original Planet of the Apes ‘Rise of the Statue of Liberty from the Wasteland of Post-Apocalyptic Earth’. But since they’ve spoiled it already, we can set that aside – for now – and see how the director of ripped-from-the-headlines dramas United 93 and Captain Phillips does tackling the six-centuries-old story of the Peasants’ Revolt.

Why not mix in a bit of the Robin Hood myth – you know, for kids?

The answer is a resounding ‘not bad’. Sidelining Tyler the creator (of the rebellion) is a bit rich, but having your hero – 645-year-old spoiler alert – killed at the end might be a bit of a downer, so Greengrass opts to tell the story from the point of view of an anonymous rebel symbolising the collective grief and rage of his fellow commoners. And since a bunch of revolting peasants might not get the audience’s blood up, despite the obvious parallels with current wealth inequality, why not mix in a bit of the Robin Hood myth, making it into a kind of superhero origin story – you know, for kids?

On the upside, The Uprising boasts committed performances, evocative medieval production design and fluid, visceral camera work (by talented Norwegian Pål Ulvik Rokseth) that puts you right in the thick of the action. But although worthy and well-intentioned, it isn’t entirely successful – a bit like the Peasants’ Revolt itself.

In UK and Ireland cinemas Fri Oct 9.