The Uprising (dir. Paul Greengrass)

by Jack Martin | Oct 8, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 128 mins

UK Distributor: Entertainment Film Distributors

UK Release Date: 9 October 2026

WHO’S IN THE UPRISING?

Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Katherine Waterston, Stanley Townsend, Gerald Tyler, Simon Kunz, Sky Yang, Jamie Maclachlan, Dónal Finn

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Paul Greengrass (director, writer, producer), Jason Blum, Gregory Goodman, Joanna Kaye, Joe Neurauter and Lars Sylvest (producers), Volker Bertelmann (composer), Pål Ulvik Rokseth (cinematographer), William Goldenberg (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In 1381, a ploughman (Garfield) leads a peasants’ revolt against the British Crown…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE UPRISING?

“Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it,” so the old saying goes. It is therefore a bit alarming that few people nowadays are taught about or even aware of a certain event known as the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, where the serfs and croppers of medieval England decided they’d had enough of the ruling class and demanded substantial changes to the law that would make things a lot fairer for them. The revolt was a defining moment in history that showed the power of standing up to authority on a massive scale, yet if it weren’t for filmmaker Paul Greengrass’s new historical thriller The Uprising, it would have been lost to the ages while people would inevitably repeat the cycle without understanding any of the lessons from before.

While it may be far too late for a movie like this to inspire or warn some of the more recent would-be revolutionaries, even those doing it for all the wrong and misguided reasons (see: the events of 6th January 2021), The Uprising is a formidable effort by Greengrass who, with his strongest film since 2013’s Captain Phillips, delivers a valuable history lesson about the power of union and standing up for what is right in this cruel, unbalanced world of ours.

The film wastes little time getting to the revolt itself, as the council of young King Richard II (Woody Norman) decides that in order to raise funds they must impose harsher taxes on the peasant class, which naturally does not go well with the peasants themselves who are already suffering from extreme poverty and the trauma of the recent bubonic plague. One such peasant, a lowly ploughman (Andrew Garfield), ends up being the one who ignites the spark that creates the fire, and soon a movement forms across the country as the ploughman – known evermore, even by himself, merely as “Ploughman” – becomes a leading figure alongside rebel leader Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis) and egalitarian priest John Ball (Jamie Bell) as they lead a march towards London in the hopes of petitioning the King for self-determination for all peasants.

In typical Greengrass fashion, The Uprising is shot with the immediacy of a documentary, his trademark handheld digital camerawork moving rapidly among the peasants as they fight back against their oppressors and ransack entire cities and towns while leaving few spare mortals or their prized possessions. I’m not going to pretend that this film will win you over to that extremely shaky style of cinéma vérité filmmaking, especially if you’re not already on board with how Greengrass shoots the majority of his action in such a way where motion sickness is more common than not, but in this case, it is a style that oddly fits the material pretty well. It brings a strong sense of immediacy to historical events that unfold here with a rawness that immerses you into the medieval chaos, where major dramatic moments are presented with such a matter-of-fact nature that they feel almost too authentic at times, even when you know that what you’re watching almost certainly wasn’t how it went down in real life.

The director maintains a steady focus on this thrilling realism, even if it sometimes comes at the expense of a script that doesn’t have as much depth as a historical event like this may require. Its pace is set at such a speed where basic characterisation is minimal at best, as figures both real – most notably Wat Tyler, perhaps the most notorious face of this rebellion – and fictional continuously make their causes heard without really getting into who they are or why they have ultimately come to these mindsets that they adopt for the rest of the movie. This is most true with our eponymous Ploughman, for despite Garfield putting in some fiercely empathetic work to present this made-up character as a formidable emotional centre to everything going on around him, the character is a bit too much of a blank slate for the viewer to fully get behind as a protagonist. That comes to a head in an epilogue scene which suddenly gives this character a certain connection to further British folklore that is a bit eye-rolling, feeling more like a studio mandated attempt to give this story some kind of thrilling conclusion rather than just letting events unfold as they actually did.

But although it isn’t an especially deep film in terms of its writing, The Uprising is solid enough to recommend as a fierce exercise in historical fiction that highlights the harsh reality of it all while still remembering to make an entertaining movie. Greengrass has such a firm command of the camera, even at its shakiest, that the gritty environment and its numerous inhabitants still leap out with a monumental force of energy, allowing you to feel the righteous anger of the peasants as their fury burns across the land and right up to the gates of London, and later on as things begin to not work out so well in their favour. It is a very well-done piece of entertainment, but more importantly it serves as a necessary lesson about the brutal inequalities that continue to hound the lower classes in ways that only benefit certain elites, which have existed for centuries even before that fateful year of 1381, and will sadly continue for centuries to come.

That is, if people don’t stand up for what is right, as the peasants in 14th century England nobly did. Because, once again, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.

SO, TO SUM UP…

The Uprising is a compelling historical thriller that sees filmmaker Paul Greengrass apply his trademark cinéma vérité style to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in ways that make the event feel more immediate and raw, even if it is sometimes at the expense of an emotionally complex script.