As Supergirl tanks badly at the summer 2026 box office, another film is quietly building an audience and has actually found some favor with 'professional' reviewers, like the egg-sucking leftist bunch over at rogerebert.com. How could a jingoistic neocon low budget flick tossed together by a studio known mostly for cheap holy roller shlock - Angel Studios - pull this off? Well they could, and they did.
The movie is Young Washington. Let's get the 'holy roller' stuff off the table right up front. There's nary a trace of overt Christianity in this movie. Washington never goes down on bended knee asking for divine guidance, there are no preachers, no bibles, nobody invokes the Lord's name. Nothing. The only visible Christian symbol, other than crosses on a few church steeples, comes at the end of the movie when Washington is parlaying with a group of Indians. One of the chiefs is wearing a sash that carries what is clearly a Christian cross. Washington shows no interest in it, doesn't even notice it.
Yet Young Washington is clearly anchored in Christian values - devotion to family, morality, duty, honesty, service. So in that sense, it's a very Christian movie. It works because that's what Washington was - a very moral and honest man who understood his duty and responsibilities to his family, his soldiers and his nation.
The movie also mercifully excludes any 'girl boss' bullshit. Women of the mid-18th century are accurately portrayed as to their roles in society and the challenges they faced. We're also not subjected to what I'll call the 'sharp negro' syndrome, where the wily slaves outwit and make fools of their masters and other white characters. Blacks are portrayed as precisely what they were in the mid-18th century - cheap and often expendable labor. Sorry if that offends, folks. That's history.
Young Washington is blessed (see, there's that religious thing again) with a great story to build on, great screenwriters, a great cast, and a first rate director, cinematographer, set designers and costuming crews. It's not a perfect movie - in my book it gets 4 out of 5 stars. There are some minor dialog issues, some overly long battle scenes that could have used tighter editing, and some obvious mistakes with weaponry. The surveying scenes are a joke. I used to be a surveyor, and have an strong interest in the history of surveying, so I know. But I can forgive all of these quibbles given the overall quality of the movie.
Let's discuss the stand-outs in the cast. George is played by British actor William Franklyn-Miller (what's with these pretentious hyphenated names among the acting set?). He does a great job as the main character and holds the movie together. I think he accurately captures the young Washington - inexperienced, ambitious, over-reaching, yet set with a strong moral core and a willingness to learn from his mistakes.
Mary-Louise Parker as Washington's struggling mother gives the strongest performance of the movie. She is absolutely superb in the role. Her angst, almost desperation, to keep a plantation running while raising two boys (George and his younger brother) highlights the struggles of many women shouldering enormous responsibilities within the confines of mid-18th century colonial America.
Ben Kingsley plays Robert Dinwiddie, the lieutenant governor of the colony of Virginia, and the man who gives Washington his start on a military career. Kingsley is incapable of giving a bad performance in any movie. Although he sort of loafs through this one, he still turns in a great performance as an upper-crust British aristocrat who at first looks down on Washington as an inexperienced colonial bumpkin with a lot of pretentions (which he was), but gradually sees the potential in this young man as a leader and someone who can make a quick study of a situation and adjust as necessary.
Mia Rogers plays the young Sally Fairfax, Washington's first love. Rogers plays her role expertly - someone drawn to the brash young Washington, yet always understanding that she's little more than a prize, or a pawn, in the colonial Virginia high society/high stakes marriage game. She loves Washington but understands he can never compete with the more eligible suitors vying for her hand. In real life, Washington apparently never got over her. As Mia Rogers plays her, I can understand why.
John Foss plays George's older half-brother, Lawrence Washington. This role is key to understanding Washington and what he became. After their father's death, the British educated Lawrence took George under his wing and became his teacher, mentor and surrogate father. It's fair to say that without Lawrence's guidance, George Washington would be just another footnote in a tidewater Virginia family history, and we'd very likely have remained part of the British empire.
There is rumor that, based on the success of Young Washington, Angel Studios is considering making this movie the first of a three part series. I hope they do, because there is so much more of George Washington's story left to tell. Of course we a know (or should know) about his struggles at Valley Forge, the crossing of the Delaware River and the Battle of Trenton, and the final siege at Yorktown. Those are the stories that gave us George Washington the iconic hero. But the 20 years between the 1755 Battle of the Monongahela, where Washington finally finds his footing as a field commander, and 1775, when Congress appoints him as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, is the period that made George Washington the man.
Stay sharp!
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