In our increasingly painstaking modern times, when do we need to start asking ourselves when enough will be enough? Costs, temperatures, and hostilities are rising, while feelings of optimism and hope continue to fall. There doesn’t seem to be an end to any of it - a death spiral that ends with all of us on the Titanic without any lifeboats. At least that tragedy earned the right to be told by James Cameron, while this one won’t have a future audience to lend an ear.

Armed with his handheld camera and enough mud to fill a luxury spa, writer/director Paul Greengrass taps into our pent-up rage, transporting us back to a moment in time when the populace took a stand. England circa 1381 is about as dour and depressing as you imagine it, with desolate fields hopelessly plowed by the few who survived the plague. One of them simply calls himself Ploughman (Andrew Garfield), the loss of his children and wife stripping him of any identity beyond his now meager existence. The world has left him behind, and he has left the world, too.

Except he can only stay on the sidelines for so long when he goes into town. The king has levied more taxes to pay for his wars in France and Scotland, pushing the already impoverished citizens deeper into despair. The pleas from priests, women, and children do little to warm the hearts of the collectors and soldiers, who beat anyone who impedes them. As any Midwesterner would know, if you can’t melt a piece of ice, the next step is to break it. That’s exactly what Ploughman does when he beats a soldier to death, immediately gaining the respect of his fellow peasants and igniting their fever for revolution. He’s quickly marching to London to petition the king, commanding thousands alongside former soldier Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis) and the rebellious priest John Ball (Jamie Bell).

Played by Woody Norman, the cute kid from 2021’s C’mon C’mon, this king is still a scared little boy playing dress-up as one of the most powerful figures in the world. Drawing his modern parallels with a bold-tipped marker, Greengrass has the king’s laws flow from his corrupt council. Needing funds from taxation but knowing that going after wealthy merchants (cough cough, billionaires, cough) or the church would upset their power, the group decides that the populace can be wrung for every drop. Their weakness makes them easy targets, cash registers to make withdrawals from until they die.

Knowing his audience has much more in common with a medieval peasant than a king, Greengrass rushes through the beginning stages of this revolt, immediately pushing large armies to descend on London. Most characters are written as mouthpieces for their ideologies, with the famous faces doing the heavy lifting of adding in some characterization. Mixed with Garfield’s anger is his vulnerability, an everyman whose need to right the wrongs enacted on him and others usurped his desire to waste away the rest of his days in misery.

Greengrass captures that down-to-earth quality by literally getting down into the ground. His trademark shaky cam from the Jason Bourne movies and Captain Phillips is on full display here, with zooms and depth of field changes. It’s still done in service of the usual medieval cinematic language, with peasants dressed in brown rags, pitchforks raised in the air, and dimly lit castle corridors masking intrigue. Generic as it feels most of the time, editor William Goldeneberg keeps things moving with urgency, stressing the importance of striking when the iron is hot.

Since stoking that fire in our bellies was clearly Greengrass’ intention, it’s bafflingly silly that he decides to end the film on a righteously uplifting note that tries to tie everything back to the green-colored medieval figure everyone knows (and in the public domain). Even the marketing department seemed confused as to how much that moment should influence the rest of the film, running ads based on it for only a little while before backtracking. Being socially conscious is all well and good, but we all need to remember that the top thing on their mind is how to get your $12.

Focus Features will release The Uprising in theaters nationwide on September 11th.