"The Uprising" Fails to Rise

For a movie called The Uprising, the film fails to rise above the competence Paul Greengrass is usually able to deliver. Here is a movie about a fascinating subject that is shot with great flair by an acclaimed director, features strong acting from all the actors involved, and tackles some very fascinating topics, yet the only emotional reaction it produces is one of indifference. As I watched the film in a (mostly) empty theater, I found myself in the awkward position of finding myself impressed with almost every aspect of the movie while simultaneously feeling no emotional attachment to anything that was happening on screen.

What was going on?

The story revolves around common folk in England who are being taxed by an indifferent king to a breaking point where they feel they can no longer afford to do so. They hit a “breaking point,” and a revolt begins to petition the king to make their living situation more bearable. The problem is, unknown to them, the king is a young kid who is largely unqualified to lead a kingdom, and his rule has been superseded by his council members, who know how to sweet-talk him to keep him out of the important meetings while they make crucial decisions about how the kingdom is run. Even the king's mother sees that her son is weak, but feels powerless to alter the situation when more powerful political figures surround him.

This is a fascinating story that has the potential to be an epic film. The issue, as I mulled over it, is that the movie, ironically, is probably too short for everything that is being thrown at the audience. The film does follow a farmer who has had enough of the kingdom's abuse and takes up the rebellion (Andrew Garfield), yet his backstory consists of him losing his family to the plague and sort of stumbling into a leadership role. Out of all the leaders, he seems more like a mediator in the conflict, and his personal feelings about the rebellion don’t come until the end of the film, making him a passive protagonist. There are two priests who join the uprising with different philosophical goals, with one looking for peace and another seeking revenge, yet neither comes into conflict enough to matter.

The strongest aspect may be the king himself, who goes through three stages of massive character growth. He starts out as a sniveling child, comes to realize he has more power than he was given credit for, and ultimately makes a choice to be a specific kind of king that will drastically alter the kingdom's future. I feel the first two phases are handled fairly well, but when the third one comes around, it happens so abruptly that you can’t help but wonder if some pages from the screenplay failed to print when binding the papers. Especially bizarre is an epilogue that suggests that this real-life event story is somehow tied to a mythical literary figure. I won’t spoil who that figure is (even if the marketing is doing so), but it is a…let’s just say that it is a strange choice to make.

At two hours and nine minutes, the vast majority of these story beats and thematic elements are touched upon before the film moves on to the next. I can’t shake the feeling that a three-hour movie with more time to breathe would have given everything the time it needed to be properly fleshed out. Because there’s nothing inherently wrong with The Uprising when I really think about it. It has great actors, the premise is interesting, the conflicts are there, the action is solid, the direction is inspired…and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to care. It’s a movie that is doing so many things in such a short amount of time that it succeeds at doing nothing especially well. That’s what makes reviews like this difficult to write, because you have no idea how hard it is to write an 800-word review just to come to the conclusion, “I didn’t hate it…but I didn’t like it either.”