Picturehouse Blog

In such features as United 93, Captain Phillips and last year's The Lost Bus, British filmmaker Paul Greengrass has thrilled, absorbed, and moved us with stories about the selfless heroism of ordinary people. His characters often find themselves, through no fault of their own, caught up in high-risk, life-or-death situations – something seen in his extraordinary work on the Jason Bourne franchise, too. In his latest, The Uprising, those righteous ranks are swelled by Andrew Garfield's Ploughman, a humble farmer in 14th century England who's driven to rebel against an unfair system that keeps him and his ilk in serfdom. 

Inspired by the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, The Uprising is a gritty, historical epic that pits Garfield's aggrieved labourer against the then-monarch of England, the boy king Richard II (Woody Norman). Yet its focus on inequality and injustice could hardly be more contemporary, not least in the light of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis afflicting so many UK households. "All across the world there's this sort of roiling rage," observes Greengrass, who sees a universality in the revolt that talks directly to those who feel discontented today. "It was the first moment in our history when the common man and woman took centre stage." 

In the case of Garfield's character, a smallholder who has lost his wife and children to bubonic plague, it is the harsh taxes imposed by Richard's agents that ignite the fire of insurrection. It is a fire that quickly sweeps the land, prompting bloody confrontations with the king's forces that take Garfield and his allies, among them the radical preacher John Ball (the ever excellent Jamie Bell), all the way to the city of London. 

Greengrass's gift for hard-hitting action will be familiar to anyone who's seen his contributions to the frenetic world of Jason Bourne, so we can expect the clashes between the peasants and their oppressors to have a visceral, pulse-pounding intensity. "The way he shoots is unbelievable," says Bell, whose ambitions to work with the director date back to seeing Greengrass's 2002 docudrama Bloody Sunday when he was a teenager. "The cameras are just floating around somewhere and you're just always on." 

Garfield and Bell are accompanied on screen by a star-studded ensemble that includes Stephen Dillane, Katherine Waterston and Cosmo Jarvis. They all contribute to a nerve-jangling thriller that blows the dust off the history books, brings the past into the present and makes you think and feel, all courtesy of a master director at the top of his game.

Neil Smith

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The Uprising is in cinemas from 9 October — Book Now!