Written And Directed by Nick Hamm
Willam: "We will take back our homes, our town, our country. We will summon up our skills and we will teach our enemy how we war."
Going for a bit of historical fiction, I'm fairly familiar about the story of William Tell (Claes Bang) and here, it's a two hour war epic with our title hero finding himself immersed into a war between Switzerland and Austria.
As the film started, Switzerland found themselves as a province under the rule of the Austrian royal house of Habsburg and it's a ruling where Switzerland found themselves under the tyranny of Habsburg to the point where farmer Konrad Baumgarten (Sam Keeley) killed constable Wolfshot (Billy Postlethwaite) for attacking his wife.
Of course this further escalated tension and the tyrannical Habsburg King Albert (Ben Kingsley) got his vassal Gessler (Connor Swindells) to hunt for Baumgarten. Albert's niece, Bertha (Ellie Bamber) was more keen on peace and hated her uncle's treatment of the Swiss. Unfortunately for her, not even being royal blood prevented her from being in danger.
There's a romance between Bertha and the heir to the Swiss House of Attinghausen, Rudenz (Jonah Hauer-King) that's developed through the movie. Rudenz spent some time fence sitting in the movie, which frustrated his ailing uncle, Attinghausen (Jonathan Pryce). Of course the worse the likes of King Albert and Gessler got, the more Rudenz was forced to pick a side and throw his lot in with William Tell.
Going back to the villains, I do think that both King Albert and Gessler are strong enough villains to carry the movie. Gessler was the more physical force, intimidating Tell's wife and son, Suna (Golshifteh Farahani) and Walter (Tobias Jowett). However there's something delightful in Gessler's realisation when the odds turned against along with Albert's daughter, Agnes (Jess Douglas-Welsh) declaring vengeance on the Swiss.
- Thanks to Gessler, we did get to see William using his arrow to shoot an apple on his son's head.
- There's some nice supporting performances from Wanna Hardwicke, Emily Beecham and Rafe Spall to name a few.
- Of course there's still no historic evidence that William Tell actually existed.
- Chronology: The movie takes place during 1307 in Switzerland.
William Tell made for a decent if somewhat plodding historic war epic. The performances are solid along with some of the fight scenes but it's not the most compelling of takes on the legend. It's not bad as such, just plodding.
Rating: 6 out of 10
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