THE STORY – In the 14th Century, when European nations vie for supremacy within the Holy Roman Empire, the ambitious Austrian Empire, desiring more land, invading neighboring Switzerland. William Tell, once a peaceful hunter, finds himself forced to take action as his family and homeland come under threat from the oppressive Austrian King and his ruthless warlords.
THE CAST – Claes Bang, Connor Swindells, Golshifteh Farahani, Jonah Hauer-King, Ellie Bamber, Rafe Spall, Emily Beecham, Solly McLeod, Amar Chadha-Patel, Jonathan Pryce & Ben Kingsley
THE TEAM – Nick Hamm (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 133 Minutes
If Nick Hamm’s “William Tell,“ a page-to-screen adaptation of Friedrich Schiller’s epic 18th-century play, “William Tell,“was even remotely as absorbing or invigorating as the mid-film scene its first few images tease, it might smell of genuine franchise potential. The film’s opening moments see the titular marksman (Claes Bang, donning a buzz cut and goatee that somehow make him even more threatening than his 6-foot-4-inch frame) staring down a young man with an apple atop his head. Tell, distressed, raises his crossbow and aims to fire. Before he can pull the trigger, Hamm cuts to three years earlier. It takes more than an hour to return to that moment.
It’s not that the intervening events don’t place a significant amount of emotional stakes on the eventual apple shot’s outcome. Once we arrive in the middle of a town square, we become familiar with the young man on the wrong end of the arrow’s flight path as Tell’s son, Walter (Tobias Jowett). We’ve also learned why Tell, his wife, Suna (Golshifteh Farahani), and several friends and fellow freedom fighters have made their way to this pivotal event: The tyrannical Austrian army, led by Viceroy Gessler (“Sex Education’s” Connor Swindells, the film’s MVP) and his loathsome sidekick, Stussi (Jake Dunn), plunges swords into anyone who won’t bend the knee and pledge allegiance to the deranged King Albrecht (a delightfully uncommitted Ben Kingsley). Light on its feet, even as it runs 133 minutes in length, the overload of exposition that leads us to this standout scene is all (probably) necessary. It’s just… not all that interesting.
Few folk tales are as familiar in name as “William Tell,“ but far be it from anyone to tell you that they can recall a single detail from the classic grade school fable about the world-class medieval sniper who helped liberate the Swiss in the 14th Century. But, with “William Tell,“ Hamm and his producers don’t seem worried about your familiarity with the source; what they’re willing to bank on is that you’ll recognize its beats enough to become invested before the first hour is up. They’re so confident that they went mad and set up a sequel with their film’s ending, even though the project entered this year’s Toronto International Film Festival without a distributor – a fact that remained until the day of its world premiere when Samuel Goldwyn bought North American rights.
Perhaps that’s the best possible home for “William Tell“ to find success, though. It will immediately rank among the independent studio’s starriest titles, if only because its cast is so sprawling. Not since 2015’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty“ has a Samuel Goldwyn title been so “stacked,“ for lack of a better word. Beyond Bang, Kingsley, Swindells, and Farahani, the ensemble also includes Ellie Bamber as Princess Bertha, a royal who goes rogue; “The Little Mermaid’s”live-action Prince Eric; Jonah Hauer-King as Rudenz, a soldier who is also Bertha’s lover on the down-low; Rafe Spall as Stauffacher, a crusader and an old friend of Tell’s; and Jonathan Pryce, as Rudenz’s uncle, the King of Attinghausen. A franchise might do the characters who manage to make it out of “William Tell“ alive some good, considering that, while the film is overlong and dense, it can’t possibly give everyone a fair due, nor the proper amount of expository information that might make us care when they get stabbed in the throat.
As for what happens in “William Tell,“ boiling it down isn’t too difficult: It’s about a Swiss huntsman – not a savage, as his son asserts when Tell begins to lose his way amidst the conclusion’s brutality – forced to guide his homeland out from under the Austrian King’s thumb, a ruthless one at that. Early in Hamm’s adaptation, Tell is faced with a dilemma: Stay with his family and live out his days as a peaceful father and husband, or save a fugitive’s life. Noble as ever, Tell opts for the latter path, sending him on a treacherous journey across the Swiss countryside, where he must travel through villages without the King’s army noticing his stowaway. He gets help along the way, and when things come to a head with his post-apple shot arrest, he inspires the inadvertent formation of his own army, one that will go head-to-head with Gessler’s. (The action scenes peppered throughout are expertly staged, serving as the film’s redemptive calling card).
If it sounds like the premise for a rejected Starz series, that’s because it might have been better in that format. It’s a comment we don’t relish making – along with when someone watches a movie and immediately notes afterward, “That would’ve been cool as a mini-series.“ The same goes for “that should’ve been shorter“ in regards to an epic or “nothing happened, though“ in regards to a slow-burn thriller. This makes it all the more painful that all of these distinctions could reasonably be applied to “William Tell.“
The aforementioned plot summary is, in essence, the entire movie, just with a few key details and character fates omitted. It’s a massive work of set-up cinema, which might fly for devoted superhero cinephiles but hardly goes down smoothly when delivered in a fashion that itches to be viewed intellectually and all at once. There are even more characters that could have been included in this review’s already long list of them, but odds are you wouldn’t be able to keep track of them all. We didn’t even bother listing off all of the locations the film travels to because the shots of each castle appeared to have been reused throughout the film, an infuriating realization, and they don’t matter. As long as “Hero X“ and “Enemy Y“ are in the same place, the stakes are high enough.
These points aren’t made to tear down what was clearly a project of passion for Hamm, and, to his credit, you get that sense from his film’s highly-detailed plotting and its pinpoint accuracy to its original text, down to some of the dialogue. It’s just a bit much to ask for the standard moviegoer to care about an old folk tale stretched out over almost two-and-a-half hours, not to mention one that doesn’t give itself the courtesy of having a proper conclusion. Perhaps more viewings of “William Tell“ would be beneficial, especially to feel inspired to catch its sequel, a non-guarantee. But, unless you’re an impassioned viewer of period epics, no matter how intriguing the substance may seem on paper, the chances that you’ll fire this up on repeat are about as good as you shooting an apple off of a loved one’s head rather than piercing their skull. If you couldn’t care less, you’ll likely see “William Tell“ as an incomplete sentence. All of the right words are there, but then it just…
