by Jeffery Rahming, Contributing Writer
When you first hear the title, Young Washington sounds like a PBS Kids show starring a child George Washington having adventures with a talking bald eagle named Freedom. The type of thing that’s only good for telling outdated fables about America that we’re all just about tired of seeing. And while Young Washington definitely isn’t kids’ fare, with its brutal portrayal of the American frontier, it does beg the question of whether there’s really this much of a place for this kind of patriotic fantasy in 2026. Not that history should be ignored, but given that we’ve told and retold these stories several times in our country’s 250-year history, could yet another mythmaking George Washington film really provide anything new?
We find our first president in a whirlwind period of his life, as he quickly advances from a simple surveyor to the leader of a militia in the span of a year. Determined to make his place in the wonderful “new” land of America, Washington (William Franklyn-Miller) is given the simple order to deliver a message to the French telling them to vacate the Ohio Country. Unsurprisingly, the French don’t respond well, and he finds himself at the forefront of what would come to be known as the French and Indian War. With just one assignment, he’s shoved to the forefront of the testy political sphere of the early colonial era.
There’s no denying it: this movie is just hero worship. Which isn’t to say it isn’t genuine hero worship. This was clearly made by a passionate team that really cared about this story. Everything from the period-accurate costumes to the incredible colonial fort sets makes clear that this is a meticulous labor of love for the production team. But it never quite gets over the fact that Washington is portrayed like a superhero, which makes the whole thing feel a little corny. It’s to the point where, once he finally gets in his official uniform you might remember from the paintings, it’s treated like Tony Stark armoring up for the first time. While it’s probably too much to ask for a nuanced portrayal of what the man was actually like, instead there is a complete lack of depth entirely. Franklyn-Miller gives a stellar performance, but it’s the performance of a myth or an action hero, and not once does he feel like a person. It’s not horrible; it just feels very generic. If it really felt like I was getting any insight into the man so praised by our country, it would be interesting, but instead we just get the same patriotic “He was just a good guy with a dream” schlock that we should’ve let die already. It just comes off like yet another fluff piece to convince us once again that our founding fathers were the best men ever to walk the planet, rather than flawed individuals who had some very good ideas.
For the most part, the cast tries its best to bring this seventh-grade play-level writing up to snuff. The script burdens Franklyn-Miller with cringe-inducing monologues about destiny and freedom. Ben Kingsley is having fun chewing the scenery as Washington’s superior, Robert Dinwiddie, who holds Washington’s future in his hands. Clement Toyon, who plays French commander Joseph Jumonville, is a fun scene-stealer in the five minutes before his demise sparks the war. I wish we had gotten more of him, but unfortunately, history prevails. If there’s a clear weak point, It’s Mia Rodgers as Sally Fairfax, who is clearly a capable actress but just comes across as jarringly modern in a way the other actors don’t. Not entirely sure if this is on the writers, the direction, or her, but regardless it’s distracting enough to take you out of the movie. Even if the performance was great, Fairfax and Washington’s brief romantic subplot adds little to the story and feels obligatory.
Young Washington is definitely at its peak when it’s an action movie. The revolutionary-era battles, while I’m sure they are highly exaggerated compared to real life, are incredibly dynamic and capture the chaos of men battling in muddy fields with nothing but muskets, cannon fire, and pure guts. We even open with an amazing “oner” that tricks you into thinking this might actually be a fun ride all the way through. Unfortunately, the action scenes are only a small buffer from the dull main plot. The story of Washington’s rise in the British ranks, which he would later rebel against, is fine but not worth a full-length film. The French Indian War was always a footnote in the history books, and for good reason. If not for the first president’s key role in the war, it would have been nothing more than one of many skirmishes that shaped America before it became a real country. It runs into a common prequel problem where you know everything that happens after this story is far more interesting.
Young Washington feels like somebody took a much longer streaming show about George Washington and compiled it into a 2-hour cut. It almost works, but it doesn’t quite escape the feeling that I should be watching it on a TV, not in a theater. There’s nothing wrong with exploring America’s history, but Washington’s early military career just isn’t interesting enough to hold its own movie, and you can feel the writers stretching to turn a rather mundane historical event into a fun action-adventure, feeling like something better left in the 90s. We live in too knowledgeable an age to pretend that our founding fathers were perfect, morally superior men. Not that it’s offensive, it has simply been done before. The action is the only thing that really sets Young Washington apart; otherwise, it may only entertain the history buffs.
Rating: Just Okay
Young Washington is currently playing in theaters
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