The Uprising | UK Trailer | In Cinemas Everywhere October 9<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nPOSITIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For as much that has changed about the world in the hundreds of years since the depicted events of the film, financial inequality driven by tyrannical leaders seems to be among the sociological ailments that we can never effectively shake, and considering one of the most brutally barbaric examples of this inferiority struggle pertains to the malnourished and poverty-stricken people of England during the 13th century, it offers a starkly compelling argument against contemporary capitalist policies, with Greengrass’ single most aggressively driven direction in quite sometime. Like the very people engulfed in the depicted power struggle, Greengrass’ articulated commentary not only coherently conveys the irresistible strength in numbers amongst collective community, but also the bleakly dire conditions of this small town humbled humiliatingly by egregious tax policies, and while the hotly contested back-and-forth physical battles between sides offers the most endearing aspect for action juggernauts and even horror hounds, especially in the scope and scale of Greengrass’ documentation, the movie is most profoundly evocative while dissecting through a mutual character study throughout its second half, where Garfield’s Ploughman and Norman’s King intersect emotionally as a result of the uprising, but with contrastingly diverse paths in their respectively expanding morality that offers a compelling contrast meant to convey the planets distance between their necessary resolution. As to where Ploughman discovers the courage and conviction to challenge authority and lead his people from a transparent disposition of humility, King Richard II’s own incapability of embracing humility eventually drives him to evoke the ferocious fear and cunning manipulativeness to his own unflinching authority, inspiring two powerfully commanding performances between them that endearingly bring these characters to life with such expansive performances. As to where the script does each of them little favors in the blazed trail towards developmental characterization, Garfield and Norman excel at building a mountain out of an ant hill, specifically the former, who earnestly articulates the haunting heartbreak and wits-end frustration of a widower constantly struggling to make ends meet in a coldly cruel world that constantly condemns his efforts, with the right amount of effortlessly attainable empathy deposited to his design that only Garfield could capably conjure. While Norman’s turn isn’t as versatile as Garfield’s, it does render the realistic side of authoritarian influence, where his initially timid weakness during council overpowering gives way to a weaponized subjugation that prove to be advantageous for him in the psychological side of the marathon, measuring admirable work to elevating what is otherwise a thinly written and cliched character. Aside from dissecting direction and prominent performances, the experience is also elevated by the superior side of the movie’s inconsistent production values, which transform the canvas seamlessly into 13th century Europe, where the gloomily somber atmosphere of a plague-torn community is conjured in a meaningful combination of natural lighting and scenic isolation to Pal Ulvik Rokseth’s stirring cinematography. As a result of the former, there’s always a darkly enveloping hue to the movie’s imagery and weathered color pallet that adds ominously to the vulnerability of the characters, without homefield advantage to the established conflict, while the latter measures the peaceful tranquility of what’s worth fighting for, and it allows the production to find redeemable beauty among the war-torn lands, in the least likeliest of places and approaches, helping to counteract the enthusiastically emphasized side of the presentation that plunders the necessary clarity and cohesion to remain faithfully invested to the developments of the storytelling. On top of this, the wardrobe designs from Toth Andras Daniel and Godena-Juhasz Attila do more than enough to capture the distinct financial gaps of its confrontational sides, without anything overly flashy or downright silly to the respective classes, while Daniel Kresco’s elaborately detailed sound mixing anxiously breeds the combustible elements of danger and intensity accordingly to assist overriding some strangely bewildering framing devices to the movie’s imagery, helping to enhance the vitriolic rage of distributed violence that assists in some garishly gruesome violence enjoying the comforts and conveniences of an expressive R-rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
NEGATIVES<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, for as much as The Uprising thrives during its most grippingly intense moments, there’s just as many detracting components to Greengrass’ techniques that obscure the clarity and detectability of the imagery, with the worst of those coming during aggressively supercharged action sequences that are executed with the most nauseating kinds of shaking camera capture. This is something that I hope would be cinematically extinguished in 2015, but unfortunately still finds its way to direction that overly exemplifies the anxious tension of the environment more than the interpretability of the actions, constantly taking my investment out of commission whenever the visual storytelling becomes obligated with replicating the speeds and responses of its characters. Even during the film’s more subdued moments during interaction, there’s still some sharp zooms and sloppily rendered handheld concepts that makes this feel like a mockumentary of sorts, feeling tonally and conceptually improper to such an important story with a contemporarily relevant parallel worthy of your undivided attention. On top of some obnoxiously jarring techniques, the entirety of the supporting characters receive little in the way of meaningful development to make them feel like a fully formed character capably worthy of audience investment, particularly Thomasin McKenzie’s Alyce, who beyond a shared traumatic bond with Ploughman mentioned briefly at the tail end of the second act, receives nothing meaningfully significant to the script’s content to flourish tangibly influential results to the narrative’s integrity. While I wholeheartedly understand that this is Ploughman’s story first and foremost, the lack of expansive depth outside of the established protagonist gives the world-building such a limitation of lived-in dynamic converging on this road to vengeance, and with each of these supporting characters essentially streamlining their briefly deposited arcs through Ploughman, who is constantly at an arms reach, it proves how little time and creative effort went towards fleshing them out accordingly, and the magnitude of the established conflict suffers significantly as a result of Greengrass’ visual scope and occasional spectacle in overhead C.G drone shots not lining up with characters who we’re often told are important, without deliberately showcasing why. This isn’t the only issue for the script, however, as it also contradicts so much of the morality of its characters with their hypocritically enacted actions, making it just as difficult to dissect the film thematically as it is to interpret it visually. While there are a couple of noteworthy examples to its creative outline, the strongest among them is definitely Ploughman’s objective for peaceful resolution, which the movie deliberately compromises by constantly showing how effective it works at attaining the necessary results in seemingly the very next scene, and while such a contradiction should inevitably be the film’s most intellectually challenging quality, it’s undermined by a shallow screenplay that never thoroughly examines it with the necessary expansive conversations, offering a broad, surface level approach that trivializes the animalistic violent sides of its protagonists, without any kind of humbling parallel between them and their inhumane adversaries. As conflicted as my engagement already was with these inferior elements, the tacked-on feeling of a reshot ending ultimately took my final grade down a few more points, as what feels like a Marvel origins story for the character of Robin Hood is unearthed in a resolution that isn’t entirely satisfying or tonally synthetic with every scene of the film that came before it. While it’s bad enough that the film doesn’t know where to fittingly end its engagement to keep from compromising its crowd-pleasing capabilities, it’s not as detrimental as the film’s inability to effectively nail down whether it’s a Robin Hood movie or not, regardless of what’s been documented in the public eye, where Ploughman not only feels like a completely different character between the end of the third act and the movie’s ending, five minutes later, but also throws away world-changing clarity with ridiculous justification that underscores the loss of his family and friends alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OVERALL
The Uprising might be a grittily grimy historical epic with a great sense of anger and disillusionment towards the financial inequality maintained by tyrannical leaders, but it’s tragically an underwritten and egregiously visualized finished product that muddies such a sweepingly epic backdrop of European history. Despite the magnitude of its ambition feeling mostly unrealized, the film persists compellingly through two hours of tense and bloody conflict because of Andrew Garfield’s intensely unraveling turn as an overwhelmed grieving widow, with only Paul Greengrass’ unnecessarily propulsive techniques overexerting a financial tug-of-war of a story that capably tells itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My Grade: 5.6 or C-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Directed By Paul Greengrass Starring – Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane The Plot – Andrew Garfield stars as Ploughman, the leader of a ferocious rebellion against the tyranny of King Richard II (Woody Norman). Set against the true events of the Uprising that had he and his people risking everything, he forms an unlikely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,4,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9900"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9902,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9900\/revisions\/9902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefilmfreak.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}