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William Tell starts with the titular character, played by Claes Bang (Dracula), being told by the evil Viceroy Gessler (Connor Swindells – Scoop) to shoot an arrow into an apple, which has been placed on his son Walter’s (Tobias Jowett) head, then goes back 3 days earlier…
One of the mad thing with this film is that it has so many characters coming in and out, that you lose count of who’s called what and hope that the cast list will fill you in, but even IMDB and Wikipedia don’t have full lists, either, and with both Emily Beecham (1899) and Ellie Bamber (The Serpent) as striking redheads, the more this film droned on, the more I was losing track of which was which.
So, early on, a young lad who I’ll call Angryyoungman kills the local tax collector in quite a violent fashion – attracting the ire of Gessler, and then goes on the run, wanting to join Tell’s rag-tag band of not-so-merry men.
It’s the Austrians vs the Swiss, and is like a history lesson, but in not identifying who is who, and since everyone is played by English-speaking actors – with no-one doing ‘Allo ‘Allo-style cod-accents – it’s difficult to know who’s on which side, other than Ben Kingsley (The Walk in IMAX 3D) as King Albert, who’s angry and shouts at everyone, as the actor usually does. He also wants to take over Switzerland.
Similarly, Jonathan Pryce (One Life) plays the Baron of Attenhausen, but… he’s Jonathan Pryce playing Jonathan Pryce, which obviously isn’t a bad thing, but I can’t think of him as anything else.
As for a lack of information, too, the film doesn’t even tell us what year we’re in, but I understand it’s 1307, so quite some time ago, but inbetween the soap opera-style acting & dialogue, they often speak in olde English, as it’s the Middle Ages.
Plus, at one point, Mr Tell says, “We are Swiss!” …No, you’re not.
It may seem odd that no-one speaks Swiss, but it doesn’t matter. On a similar note, after watching this, I saw Valkyrie was on TV and watched that again. In that film, Tom Cruise plays a renegade Nazi officer, as do a number of other English-speaking actors, and that’s a great film! So, it is possible to create such a diversion from the norm.
Along with some decent fight scenes on occasion, giving us some blood that wouldn’t be allowed if this was a 12-cert, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, as there’s also flashbacks thrown in, which get confusing as it doesn’t deliniate when these start and finish – you just occasionally notice they’re happening.
Additionally, instead of Tell’s wife being a white Swiss woman called Hedwig, here, writer/director Nick Hamm updates this for the woke brigade, making her Iranian, in the form of Suna (Golshifteh Farahani – Invasion), although at one point, she says “Brothers and sisters” with a particular intonation that was making me want to chant in a not-very-busy auditorium, “Pump up the volume!” – If you were around in 1987, you’ll know.
At 133 minutes in length, with the film returning to the apple scene at 65 minutes into the film, it has a stupid ending, perhaps leaving the door open for a follow-up movie, but… please don’t.
No wonder there was no overture for THIS William Tell!
However, there’s a swansong for the brilliant Colin Bennett, who passed away two days from his 80th birthday on Feb 23rd 2024, as Melchtal’s Father. He starred in Tony Hart’s Take Hart and Hartbeat, on BBC1 in the ’70s and ’80s, as “Mr Bennett”, the caretaker. Unforgettable!
Oh, and a cinema issue that raised its ugly head from the start, albeit one for which I blame the director. I saw the trailer beforehand, saw it’s filmed in a generally typical widescreen ratio to fit the 2.39:1 screens that dominate my Odeon, and watched it on such a screen. Hence, my surprise when the film’s about to start and we get the “It’s Time…” blurb from Taron Egerton – which actually comes up pretty much at the moment when the film IS about to start (save for a bit more blurb about BBFC certificates) – but the screen hadn’t zoomed in, and Odeon used the 1.85:1 version of this piece of video.
The film began, and was obviously very windowboxed. Exactly the same issue with 2001: A Space Odyssey, back in August 2023, which was a 2.20:1 film, albeit presented within a 2.39:1 image, so could be treated as 2.39:1 for the purposes a presentation.
While I don’t want to look at my phone during a film, I had to check the aspect ratio of William Tell, and saw it’s an odd ratio I’ve not come across before: 2.60:1! Hence, I can only imagine that someone ignored whatever instructions were sent with the film’s hard drive (which would’ve explained just to treat it like a 2.39:1 film), didn’t understand how it should be shown, and so just left it as it was during the adverts and trailers.
So, I missed 2 or 3 minutes to go out and – without getting into too much technical detail, and certainly not mentioning the aspect ratio – I explained and motioned to the guy checking tickets that the usual ‘widescreen zoom’ hadn’t been done when the film started. He then got on to a manager to look into this, and I gave my thanks and went back to my seat. I wasn’t expecting much to happen, but about 3-4 minutes later, the film ground to a halt…
Then the picture went off, briefly, then came back on, then was manually, and slowly, zoomed forward so that it filled the screen appropriately. There were still some minor black bars top and bottom, but that’s because it’s a wider aspect ratio than normal. God knows why Hamm came up with that, and didn’t just use 2.39:1 like a normal person. The same frustration goes out to Alexandre Aja, who filmed the awful Never Let Go in the obscure, but occasionally-used aspect ratio of 2.11:1!
There are no mid- or post-credits scenes.
William Tell is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 133 minutes
Release date: January 17th 2025
Studio: Altitude Films
Aspect Ratio: 2.60:1
Rating: 3/10
Director: Nick Hamm
Producers: Marie-Christine Jaeger-Firmenich, Piers Tempest
Screenplay: Nick Hamm
Music: Steven Price
Cast
William Tell: Claes Bang
Gessler: Connor Swindells
Emily Beecham
Baron of Attenhausen: Jonathan Pryce
King Albert: Ben Kingsley
Rudenz: Jonah Hauer-King
Suna: Golshifteh Farahani
Princess Bertha: Ellie Bamber
Rafe Spall
Young Tell: Éanna Hardwicke
Stussi: Jake Dunn
Furst: Amar Chadha-Patel
Baumgarten: Sam Keeley
Walter Tell: Tobias Jowett
Melchtal: Solly McLeod
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.