‘William Tell’ Review: A Rousing, Old School Hollywood Epic of a Well-Told Story | TIFF

In case you don’t remember the story of William Tell from your school days, Nick Hamm’s new film about the Swiss folk hero opens with a helpful reminder: As a whole town watches, Wilhelm Tell (Claes Bang) is forced to shoot an apple placed on his son’s head from a great distance. The scene positively sweats with tension, immediately hooking the audience into the story, liberally adapted from the 1804 play by Friedrich Schiller. What follows is a grand, old-school epic that harkens back to the days when historical dramas received more attention from audiences than they do nowadays, full of stirring speeches, rousing music, hateful villains, and satisfyingly bone-crunching battles.

In the 1300s, Switzerland is under threat of Austrian rule, as a Hapsburg king (Ben Kingsley) with one eye occupies much of the towns bordering his own territory. His tax collectors and soldiers terrorize the peaceful Swiss citizens, demanding fealty and high taxes. When a man named Baumgarten (Sam Keeley) kills a tax collector as revenge for violating and murdering his wife, only Tell will brave the stormy seas to help him escape. A former member of the Knights Templar, Tell has long sworn off violence, using his skills as an expert marksman only to hunt for food. But, over the course of helping Baumgarten, he falls afoul of the King’s top man, Gessler (Connor Swindells), a bloodthirsty parasite hellbent on bringing all of Switzerland under Austrian rule. Tell finds both his physical and mental mettle tested as he finds himself in the middle of a battle between those who want to rebel against Austria and those who would rather bend the knee.

As the political drama comes ever closer to violating his personal life, it becomes harder for Tell to remain peaceful, and Bang modulates his performance beautifully to show how the walls Tell has built to protect himself slowly fall in the face of ideals even grander than he could have imagined. The wildly charismatic actor smolders and glowers his way through the film, as staunchly masculine as an epic hero should be. The period-adjacent dialogue gives the actors plenty to chew on (Hamm’s screenplay is full of such medieval-esque bro-isms as “my trade is retribution, vengeance my occupation”), and Bang believably portrays an average man whose deep conviction inspires others more than his poetic rhetoric. Bang is ably matched by Swindells as the main antagonist, underplaying the character’s sadistic villainy in the early going so that he can go big when the script calls for it later on, without ever going over the top. Gessler is an evil son of a bitch from his first moments on screen, but reasonably so. As the conflict escalates and Tell continues to embarrass him, he becomes increasingly desperate, with Swindells slowly letting go of his civility until Gessler’s true nature is on display for all to see. He’s a perfectly hateful villain, although if over-the-top villainy is what you’re looking for, Sir Ben Kingsley has you covered as the evil Austrian king. Clad in regal robes and sporting a dazzling solid-gold eyepatch, Kingsley makes the most of his limited screen time. While he never goes to full-on high camp, he still chews plenty of scenery, especially in a fiery late scene between the king and Gessler.

Thankfully, Hamm keeps the film’s tone grounded all the way through without letting things get boring for even a second. The material is quite dramatic on its own, but the pacing keeps the tension high throughout, with smartly placed moments to let the material breathe. At two and a quarter hours, William Tell doesn’t have the length of the many historical epics it’s aping, and a romantic subplot involving the king’s niece (Ellie Bamber) and a Swiss nobleman (Jonah Hauer-King) in particular could have used more time to have a real impact. However, what the film lacks in stately pageantry, it makes up for with forward momentum, and Yan Miles’s editing ensures that the film is exciting without ever being exhausting. The film can feel a little generically epic at times – there’s no real personality to the filmmaking – but even though it’s hitting very expected beats, it hits them extremely well, giving genuine depth to its numerous discussions of rebellion, national identity, and whether bending the knee is an act of bravery or cowardice. The multicultural cast commits fully, leading to tremendously inspiring scenes of different clans coming together to pledge loyalty to each other, petty squabbles over land be damned.

Historical epics used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter, but they’ve fallen out of favor with audiences over the years, partially in response to some particularly poor, prominent flops in the ‘00s. William Tell proves that when done well, these kinds of films can be every bit as entertaining as the genre’s classics. While Hamm may not reach the heights of the best of the genre, he does a commendable job recreating both the grit of the period and the glamour that Old Hollywood slathered all over films like Ben-Hur and Spartacus. This film scratches an itch that few other films have scratched so well recently. It may not be a classic itself, but it does well enough with classic tropes of epic filmmaking that it works as a strong example of the genre anyway.

Grade: B+

This review is from the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.