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‘William Tell’ Review: Claes Bang Looks Heroic Enough, but the Character Hardly Feels Like Franchise Material
Claes Bang leads the quaint action epic 'William Tell' as the Swiss folk hero, who fired an apple off his son's head and sparked a rebellion.
Drawing inspiration from Fredrick Schiller’s 1804 play about Tell, writer-director Nick Hamm looks to engage audiences immediately by reminding them that this character is an icon: He’s the guy who shot an apple off his son’s head! From that preposterous first impression, the movie cuts to three days earlier, presenting itself as a brassy epic while counting ridicule with hideous period-appropriate haircuts, lines like “scimble scamble” and Steven Price’s overblown orchestral score. Mounted at a substantial $45 million budget, the decorated medieval sets and big vistas are captured in widescreen by DP Jamie D. Ramsay, though the visuals don’t cast the transportive spell that the best adventure films do.
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