Roger Ebert Review Calls The Uprising a Timely, Brutal Historical Epic

Paul Greengrass’s The Uprising is drawing fresh attention after a Roger Ebert review examined its contemporary political resonance, historical liberties, and uneven attempt to connect a medieval rebellion with the Robin Hood legend. Led by Andrew Garfield, the film emerges as a grim but watchable study of inequality, grief, power, and collective resistance.

Key takeaways

• The film is set during England’s 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, after the Black Death and amid punishing taxation.

• Andrew Garfield gives the rebellion an accessible emotional center as the grieving Ploughman.

• Roger Ebert’s review praises the film’s urgency while questioning its historical simplifications and final epilogue.

• Paul Greengrass’s handheld action style makes the violence immediate, though it can distract in quieter scenes.

The review’s broader significance lies in how it frames The Uprising as more than a period adventure. Its depiction of a population facing mass death, economic disruption, suppressed wages, and distrustful leadership echoes concerns familiar to modern audiences. For Era-zine readers interested in the relationship between culture and institutional change, that connection is central to the film’s appeal.

A medieval crisis with modern echoes

Set in 1381, the story unfolds in a society devastated by the plague. With as much as half the population gone, surviving workers are pressured by taxes supporting war in France and laws designed to prevent them from benefiting from labor shortages. Religious criticism of clerical wealth adds another layer to the unrest.

The film follows common people marching toward London to present their grievances to the young King Richard II. As the movement expands, disagreements over its goals collide with efforts by royal advisers to delay or contain it. The result is a political drama as much as a battlefield spectacle.

Garfield anchors a deliberately symbolic story

Garfield plays Ploughman, a farmer whose family has died during the plague and whose life remains bound to the land. Rather than presenting him as a highly individualized historical figure, the screenplay treats him as an emblem of ordinary workers pushed beyond endurance. His faith in the idea of a just king gives the rebellion an especially human contradiction: he seeks reform from the very system exploiting him.

Cosmo Jarvis plays rebel leader Wat Tyler, while Jamie Bell portrays the radical priest John Ball. Woody Norman is also singled out for a compelling performance as Richard, a ruler portrayed as devout, frightened, and increasingly volatile.

Greengrass favors intensity over precision

The review describes the film’s medieval England as bleak, sparse, and physically exhausting. Empty fields, pervasive poverty, and constant grief establish a world stripped of certainty. Greengrass’s recognizable shaky-camera approach makes combat scenes harsh and immediate, although the same technique is less effective during dialogue-heavy passages.

Historical accuracy is treated flexibly. The film alters political negotiations and invents much of its climactic confrontation, prioritizing emotional and thematic impact over reconstruction. That choice may frustrate specialists, but it supports the movie’s modern allegory.

The Robin Hood connection falls short

Despite marketing that hints at a Robin Hood story, The Uprising does not offer a conventional outlaw adventure. Ploughman appears partly inspired by Piers Plowman, the medieval poem containing an early reference to Robin Hood, but the film’s late appearance of a bow and conspicuous green clothing feels forced.

The review regards this one-year-later coda as the film’s weakest moment: an overly neat conclusion attached to a rebellion whose consequences were historically complicated. Even so, The Uprising remains a relevant, forceful historical drama—one that uses the past to ask why economic injustice and political disappointment continue to produce unrest.

• Gritty historical actioner turns Andrew Garfield into a pseudo-Robin Hood, www.rogerebert.com › reviews › the-uprising-andrew-garfield-paul-greeng....