Not since City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold has a movie title made legends seem as unattractive as the one in Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas. Yeah, Age of Uprising by itself is a pretty bad title. There have been a lot of uprisings. You can’t really pin them on any particular age. Adding on that The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas subtitle sure doesn’t make things any better, though.
But hey, whereas the legendary City Slickers sequel had the rugged-as-hell Jack Palance, Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas has the even-ruggeder looking Mads Mikkelsen. Also: I could not be more surprised that spell check did not put a red squiggly underline under the word “ruggeder,” but the English language is magical like that.
You might recognize Mikkelsen from his role as Hannibal in the TV show of the same name. He also played the role of One-Eye in the Nicolas Winding Refn film Valhalla Rising, and that’s probably the closest analogue to his role in Age of Uprising. It’s tough to tell by the trailer if there will be as much brutal violence going on as in Valhalla Rising, but that would be a pretty tall order to fill.
Also, the trailer is kind of bad. It’s got an awful voice-over going on and makes the film look not all that interesting. But hey, trailers can be misleading. Maybe the film will be all sorts of awesome. It’s probably worth the price of admission for Mads Mikkelsen alone.
The film was originally released in France and Germany under the less cumbersome title of Michael Kohlhaas, but apparently English-speaking audiences need higher word counts in their titles. Its story was adapted from a novel by Heinrich von Kleis, and is about a feudal Frenchman who is out for revenge after two of his horses get stolen. They must have been some very special horses.
Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas has already made its way to theaters in the U.K. and will be released in the U.S. this year by Music Box Films.