Young Washington

Young Washington marched into theaters July 3, 2026: a historical war drama from Angel Studios and Wonder Project, timed to the 250th birthday of the United States. If I did not know better, this movie is trying to set up the USA-CU, the USA Cinematic Universe. You have seen Young Washington; now get ready for Franklin: The Ben Franklin Story. After Mister Jefferson and The Hancock, we finally get the crossover: United States.

It is 1743. Young George Washington loses his father, and with him any shot at a proper education. What remains is a future of tenant farming. His older half-brother Lawrence steps in as a substitute father, loans him a library, and teaches him chess, specifically the lesson that a pawn can take a king, a metaphor the script repeats until you can mouth it with the cast. Grown-up George (William Franklyn-Miller) wants to become a British officer. He charms his way into the patronage of Lord Fairfax (Kelsey Grammer, having a fine time) and lands a surveying job in the Ohio Territory. There he finds the French building forts on land the Crown considers its own. Conflict ensues.

Act one is quite good. It works hard to convince you this is a serious movie to be taken seriously. That stretch is a survival story: an ambitious kid with a chip on his shoulder sent hundreds of miles into frontier wilderness. Kristopher Kimlin’s cinematography and landscapes impress, though every time the film insists you are looking at Virginia you are sitting there going: no. That is certainly Ireland, which is where they shot it. When the movie is serious about survival, adventure, or war, it works. When it tries to be a character drama, or to deify Washington as a superhero, it is less compelling.

By the end of act two and through the rest, Washington is more or less a superhero: an untouchable chosen one carving through danger while the movie all but hangs a cape on him. Eventually a supporting character declares, on screen and out loud, that he is divinely shielded. Think The Patriot, Braveheart, Last of the Mohicans: real movies that do not force the hero figure down your throat. Young Washington kind of does. Once he gets that final pep talk at the top of act three, you know he is about to go unbeatable into the finale, and he mostly does.

Every scene without gunpowder runs on fumes. George’s Virginian buddies, the ensemble meant to give the expeditions heart, are black-box theater: stage acting from people you have zero emotional connection to, because the movie gives them no characterization beyond hair-in-eyes, heavy-set guy, curly hair and big hat. They are the Washington entourage. They yell “YEAH” when the time is right.

The romance is worse because it pretends to be a storyline and goes nowhere. The film gestures at a forbidden courtship between George and Sally, then lets the thread dangle through act one and most of act two until it simply stops mattering. Mia Rodgers plays Sally like a young woman airlifted from a CW backlot, dispensing twenty-first-century sensibilities in a hoop skirt. George’s rival for her hand, George William Fairfax, is framed as a smug villain-competitor despite doing nothing wrong on screen except standing between Washington and the woman he fancies. Plot twist I had to look up after: historically Fairfax was one of Washington’s closest friends. They surveyed the frontier together when Washington was sixteen, and the friendship held for decades. The movie invents an antagonist out of a real-life friend to inject a sloppy, conflicted act-two failure and a cleaner hero arc. Mary-Louise Parker delivers her lines with the energy of a hostage reading ransom demands. She is collecting a check.

Who is this for? Boomers. Specifically the ones who will walk out calling it the cat’s pajamas. It plays like a history lesson with battle reenactments and a hero who says things like “a divine hand, perhaps.” That audience will love it. Anyone who has watched twenty-plus years of Marvel will clock the superhero origin and know it was not made for them. Neither of those facts makes the movie bad. I did not hate it. Not bad. Not great. Competent enough that I am glad I saw it, without wishing I had stayed home.

Everything above is forgivable. What is not: when the credits roll, Kelsey Grammer pops up with a special message asking you to give Angel Studios free money for a pay-it-forward ticket so others can see the movie, and would it not be great if it were America’s number-one film for the 250th? Angel Studios is a publicly traded company. They had a billion-dollar IPO. This is like Disney asking for free money at the end of Moana. I know they have done the bit on other releases. You are a corporation now. It is absurd. Angel mostly distributes what others made, like Animal Farm, then asks you for free money to help distribute things like Animal Farm.

Young Washington is still a decent movie. Despite the quirks, a fine experience. If you were already planning to go, go. If you were on the fence, it is worth a watch on streaming or VOD. 7.0 out of 10.

I will give it this, sincerely: it sent me home wanting to read about Washington, and that might be the best thing a film can do for the 250th. The country is two hundred and fifty years old, and most people can barely look at the flag. July 4th is a barbecue and some car-dealership sales. The reverence is gone. When you consider what had to happen two and a half centuries ago to get us here, a movie that makes one person crack open a history book has done something worth doing.