“Young Washington” Finds the Man Beneath the Monument

Critics have dismissed Young Washington as hagiography, a marble idol buffed for the country’s 250th, and that is the one thing it is not. What director Jon Erwin has made is smaller and more human: the story of a hungry, status-starved provincial clawing at a social order content to leave him a tenant farmer. The father of the country has not yet arrived, and the young man standing in his place is a genuine creation.

Erwin wrings a surprising amount of scale from a modest purse. More sturdy than distinguished, the craft is handsome where it counts, and when the muskets crack in the tree line, it puts you in the dirt with the men. William Franklyn-Miller plays the wounded pride with a real smolder, a shade too matinee-smooth for the pigtailed icon but alive in the part. The veterans give the picture its ballast. Ben Kingsley’s Dinwiddie is all sly and bored contempt; Andy Serkis blusters magnificently as Braddock; Kelsey Grammer lends Lord Fairfax the ease of a man who has never once doubted his place in the world.

About the Author

Giancarlo Sopo

Giancarlo Sopo is a writer exploring cinema, politics, and the conservative imagination.

Featured Tags

Critics have dismissed Young Washington as hagiography, a marble idol buffed for the country’s 250th, and that is the one thing it is not. What director Jon Erwin has made is smaller and more human: the story of a hungry, status-starved provincial clawing at a social order content to leave him a tenant farmer. The father of the country has not yet arrived, and the young man standing in his place is a genuine creation.

Erwin wrings a surprising amount of scale from a modest purse. More sturdy than distinguished, the craft is handsome where it counts, and when the muskets crack in the tree line, it puts you in the dirt with the men. William Franklyn-Miller plays the wounded pride with a real smolder, a shade too matinee-smooth for the pigtailed icon but alive in the part. The veterans give the picture its ballast. Ben Kingsley’s Dinwiddie is all sly and bored contempt; Andy Serkis blusters magnificently as Braddock; Kelsey Grammer lends Lord Fairfax the ease of a man who has never once doubted his place in the world.