‘William Tell’ falls short of hitting the bull’s-eye
It takes balls to shoot an apple off your teenage son’s head, even more when you’re a filmmaker so convinced you can turn the legend of William Tell into an action-movie franchise that you audaciously set the stage for a sequel. But that’s Nick Hamm’s “William Tell,” a big-budget ($45 million) medieval slayfest that doesn’t shy away from its preposterously bold flirtation with parody. But that’s to be expected of a filmmaker so presumptuous that he’s already anticipating a follow-up, no doubt dubbed “Deux Tell.”
First things first. What about what presents us now, a dreary, mud-caked smackdown between Tell (Claes Bang) and his hated rival, Viceroy Gessler (Connor Swindells), played at a level of villainy so over the top he’d be twirling his mustache if he had one. Fans of the Swiss legend will recall Gessler as the fiend ordering Tell to fire his arrow true and straight and split the apple atop his son’s head from 20 paces. It’s to be Tell’s get-out-of-jail-free card after defying Gessler’s demand that the huntsman take a knee, not during the national anthem, but in deference to the invading cyclopsian Austrian ruler, King Albrecht (Ben Kingsley).
The year was 1307, a time of fear and great strife among the Swiss, whose backbone had more holes than a slice of … well, you know. But Tell’s infamous brush with forced filicide allegedly rallied the troops into a resistance so powerful it only took a century to drive the House of Habsburg out of the land of luxury chocolates and precision timepieces. OK, haste was not in their timber, so sue them.
Hamm does an excellent job of recreating the apple bisection. It’s the movie’s pinnacle. Alas, when the fruit hits the ground, you’re daunted by the prospect of 70 more minutes of fluctuating between snores and gasps. Oh, yeah, and more than a few cliches, including lots of loud – very loud! – rallying speeches, a severed head or two and Mrs. Tell (Golshifteh Farahani) thrusting sharp implements into the beefy torsos of Austrian soldiers. If that wasn’t enough, Hamm introduces one of the earliest cases of PTSD with regard to Tell, tormented by visions of the horrors he witnessed as a holy soldier during the Crusades. “I’m stained in blood,” he proclaims with an agony proportional to the agony we feel hearing Bang emote the lament.
At times, “William Tell” plays more like tales from Sherwood Forest, as Mr. Tell amasses a band of merry men to join his guerilla party. They include his old war buddy Stauffacher (Rafe Spall) and a frightened fugitive farmer (Sam Keeley) on the lam after slaying the Austrian aristocrat (Billy Postlethwaite) who raped and murdered the sodbuster’s wife. The quasi-Maid Marian in this scenario is King Albrecht’s feisty niece, Princess Bertha (Ellie Bamber), who is promised to the evil Gessler but loves Jonah Hauer-King’s rebellious Rudenz, the son of the aged pacifist, Attinghausen (Jonathan Pryce).
Hamm doesn’t conceal his desire to create a film to rival “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” with Bang as his Errol Flynn. And for the most part, Bang does a bang-up job projecting Tell’s manly manliness. He’s practically a one-man killing machine, wielding his crossbow like it’s an AK-47. He’s Rambo in a leather jerkin. At 6-foot-4, Bang casts an imposing presence. And as the ladies of “Bad Sisters” can attest, he’s a hard man to take out. Same here. He dodges arrows, swords and daggers like Saquon Barkley evaded Chiefs defenders in the Super Bowl. And the one time a foe does make contact, it’s only a flesh wound.
He’s not William Tell; he’s a refugee from the Marvel Universe. And that’s a smart tactic on Hamm’s part in adapting Friedrich Schiller’s 1804 play into a cinematic blockbuster. To lure in the youngsters, you need a William Tell looking hot while kicking ass. Accordingly, Hamm gets a lot of Bang for his buck. But is the equivalent of a William Tell superhero enough to set the box office afire? Hamm seems to think so. And to prove it, he delivers a final shot dripping with a degree of arrogance matched only by the cocksure Gessler. Hamm sure better hope – figuratively speaking – he doesn’t meet the same fate.
Movie review
William Tell
Rated: R for strong/bloody violence, brief nudity
Cast: Claes Bang, Connor Swindells, Golshifteh Farahani, Ellie Bamber, Rafe Spall, Jonathan Pryce, Ben Kingsley and Jonah Hauer-King
Director: Nick Hamm
Writer: Nick Hamm
Runtime: 133 minutes
Where: In theaters April 4
Grade: B-
