Andrew Garfield leads a medieval uprising (that already stumbled in the US)
Paul Greengrass's "The Uprising" dramatizes the 1381 peasants' revolt against Richard II. It opened in the US to $3.25 million on a $20 million budget, and has been in Portuguese cinemas since 17 September.
“The Uprising” (in Portugal, “A Revolta”) has been in Portuguese cinemas since 17 September, distributed by Medeia Filmes, after a US opening that fell well short of expectations. Paul Greengrass’s film dramatizes England’s Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, a popular uprising against King Richard II in a country still recovering from the Black Death and squeezed by the taxes paying for the Hundred Years’ War.
Andrew Garfield plays the ploughman who ends up leading the rebellion, alongside Jamie Bell, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Katherine Waterston, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander and Cosmo Jarvis. Greengrass, known for his near-documentary approach to historical and political events, directs. It runs two hours and seven minutes.
A rough start in the US
In the US, where it opened over the weekend of 11 to 13 September, the film took just $3.25 million from around 2,000 theaters, a thin return on a $20 million production. Critics landed in the middle, with roughly half of Rotten Tomatoes reviews positive, praising the battles and the recreation of medieval England while faulting an uneven story. Audiences gave it a B- CinemaScore, the kind of grade that rarely sustains a film past its first weekend.
It reaches Portugal in a year when another big period production, Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey”, also packed local cinemas, and when box-office fortunes have varied far more than the films’ quality.
By Lucy Bennett
Photo: Medeia Filmes (official film still)
