Review: Andrew Garfield gets medieval in 'The Uprising,' about a revolt that speaks to today

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Set us as preferred Filmmaker Paul Greengrass is often associated with a cinematic aesthetic colloquially known as “shaky cam” — handheld cinematography enabled by lightweight digital cameras that function a lot like another character in the room, on foot, at eye-level, responding and reacting to action and dialogue the way a person would.It’s a style that has served him well in modern action thrillers like his installments of the “Bourne” franchise, and films depicting recent real-world events like “Captain Phillips” and “The Lost Bus.” Now, Greengrass applies his signature style to the Middle Ages — can shaky cam work in a medieval movie?It may seem odd, but it’s a brilliant creative choice when considering that while “The Uprising” is technically about the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England, that’s not really what it’s about.It’s about right now.The shaky cam is intended to jolt us into that awareness.

When we pick up with our protagonist, a pathetic ploughman (Andrew Garfield) living a grief-filled and wretched existence, a plague has wiped out half the population.A small group of men hoards wealth and resources, while the peasant class is heavily taxed, laws brutally enforced.

As Greengrass lays out the bare facts of this situation with a cinematic style that’s more news documentary than stuffy period piece, the parallels to our own current situation are laid bare.Movies From a new “Resident Evil” reboot from the director of “Weapons” to Oscar contenders starring Mikey Madison and Tom Cruise, here are the movies we’ll be at this fall.“The Uprising,” which Greengrass wrote and directed, is told in a fairly simple fashion, with an emphasis on visual storytelling and visceral sensation (the disparate English accents are also lost in the melee of the mob).

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