Critic Reviews

With strong performances, the gorgeously overwhelming environment (the sounds of wind and flies are practically supporting characters), and at least one agonizingly long close-up, Age of Uprising unsettles as it raises troubling questions about the price, morality and flexibility of a "principled stand."

With his thin-lipped, narrow-eyed, disquietingly symmetrical face, Mikkelsen is nearly as good a prop as he is an actor. That impassive but selectively expressive mug is what makes Age Of Uprising’s climax shocking and memorable, but not at all in the way viewers will be conditioned to expect.

This is a much drier, more reserved affair, though it can be quite powerful on the rare occasions when it allows raw emotion to make its way to the surface.

Greatly cognizant of the revenge genre's penchant for hypocritical demagoguery, director Arnaud des Pallières unsettles the audience's usual feelings of vicarious blood lust.

Perhaps as a parable, simplicity is what is required, although sometimes the film does not rise to tragedy. Visually, Age of Uprising is classy and plausible, but delivers less than it promises.

Age of Uprising falls awkwardly (but not altogether unappealingly) into the gap between art film and horse opera.

Director Arnaud des Pallières lends a bleak austerity to the story, but with only one murky battle scene to quicken the blood it’s hardly a recipe for unbridled excitement.

The feudal revenge drama sacrifices thrills in favor of moral reflection in the unspoiled French countryside, keeping most of its violence at arm's length.

The severely beautiful film is painted in a dauntingly austere manner, as if lost in a war against itself, with confrontations underplayed and the rural landscapes making more of an impression than the detoured drama.

It’s handsome, stately and deathly dull.