The English title of this film, known in France simply as Michael Kohlhaas, is Age of Uprising. It’s a title that has the potential to mislead a viewer into thinking they’re getting a CGI heavy epic, rather than this bleak and brooding morality tale of choices and consequences. Mads Mikkelsen’s Kohlhaas is a horse trader whose sense of basic justice is challenged by the arbitrary power of a petty nobleman. A dispute over horses spirals into personal revenge before Kohlhaas gathers a band of dispossessed fighters to challenge the authority of the ruling class.

Whilst there are plenty of swords and crossbows on display there’s little actual violence in this film. Instead it concentrates on the inner turmoil of the central character as he wrestles with his desire for vengeance, his sense of duty and his deeply held protestant faith which tells him that only God can judge men. That Mikkelsen can show this battle inside his soul whilst spending most of the film immoveable atop a horse or staring out at the windswept landscape is a tribute to his subtlety as an actor.

Alongside Mikkelsen, director Arnaud des Pallières fills his cast with some of European cinema’s best known faces, Bruno Ganz appears as the decent face of nobility, Pan’s Labyrinth’s Sergi López makes a comic cameo as a wannabe freedom fighter and Holy Motors star Denis Lavant pops up a Martin Luther to challenge Kohlhass’s motives. However it’s two female roles which show both Kohlhass’s powerlessness and the price of his obsession.

Roxanne Duran’s Princess, small and fragile as a Meissen figurine still manages to dominate her one scene and embodies autocratic power and the limits of Kohlhass’s rebellion whilst his increasingly distant relationship with his daughter (Mélusine Mayance) shows the damage done by obsession. This isn’t a sweeping epic. It’s not a French Braveheart. Instead it’s an interesting if difficult to categorise piece of European humanist filmmaking. Thoughtful and thought provoking audiences are likely to be left stroking their chins rather than yelling for freedom, but that’s probably no bad thing.