Robin Hood

"Honest, brave, and naive - that is your Englishman, right there"

Quite possiblky the most boring idea for a movie ever - a new Robin Hood, made by Ridley Scott, and starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. I know it's not very fashionable to like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but I do, and this new version of the famous tale just makes me appreciate the Kevin Costner-starring version all the more. For some unknown reason, Scott thought it would be a good idea to make a 'prequel' to the familar Robin Hood story. The result is a typically unambitious and overbudgeted medieval epic that's big on political scheming and large-scale sword battles but rather miserly when it comes to humour, characterisation, and bringing something new to the table.

Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is one of many working class crusaders plundering their way back across Europe on behalf of King Richard. He falls afoul of some taitors who plot to weaken England to help pave the way for a French invasion, and makes a pact with a dying Sir Robin of Loxley to return his sword to the Loxley family. In order to maintain safe passage, Robin assumes the identity of 'Robin of Loxley', and returns home to find the home counties stifling under the twin blades of Prince John's poor leadership and the church's unquenchable greed. Robin soon finds himself a traitor in a tyrannical land, and begins to lead a people's revolt. All the mythic characters are present; Maid Marian, Will Scarlet, Little John, Friar Tuck, the Sheriff of Nottingham, etc. The only problem is that, aside from Maid Marian, none of them are really given any screen time.

The story doesn't really feel like it gets going until at least an hour again... I was waiting the whole time for Robin to finally get back to England and start robbing the rich, but Ridley Scott seems to forget the whole bloody point of the Robin Hood story! The idea that Robin Hood isn't really Robin of Loxley is a fairly daft one, the surprise of this 'revelation' relies on the audience having prior knowledge of the Robin Hood story. I don't like how all interpretations of this story now seem to lean on previous versions and rely on audience familiarity to play on the formula. For example, there's a new character in this called Godfrey (Mark Strong), who's the real villain of the piece. If we're going to have a new villain and a hero who isn't really Robin of Loxley then why not just make a new medieval adventure rather than pretending it's about Robin Hood? It's not Robin Hood at all - it's just a bunch of generic bullshit that no one cares about.

I don't think the bigger political story was really neccessary. What's with directors like Scott always thinking that bigger is better? The Sheriff of Nottingham barely even shows up because it's impossible to make him fit into the grand scale of the story. I had to laugh as well at Will Scarlett... in this version of the story he's just a bloke with red hair. That's about the extent of characterisation in the script. It's fun to see Max Von Sydow play a non-sinister character in his old age after getting cast as evil old men for so long, and the casting of --- as Little John was good too (though predictably unutilised). Crowe's Robin Hood is a man's man, easy with his friendship and with a shady past. As might be expected, he plays it with a gruff solace to give us a cliched 'deep', introspective hero who's paradoxically both sensitive but tough and armoured. Yawn. Crowe just isn't charismatic or colourful enough to play Robin Hood.

There is one cool bit in this film where Robin shoots an arrow and a high definition camera follows it's point-of-view into a bad guy's head. More of this sort of thing would've been good, but (believe it or not) this is the only real moment where he even shoots an arrow in the whole movie! Robin Hood is a pointless prequel to a sequel that will never come. It's overlong and not focused enough (or at all) on the things that made the Robin Hood story so popular. Ridley Scott should've just been more honest about the fact that he was basically remaking Braveheart. There's some cool watercolour animation at the end... if you were going to watch this movie I'd recommend just going straight to the final credits and watching these (they actually resemble the traditional Robin Hood story more closely!). Imagine a whole film done in this watercolour-treatment? Now that would've been epic.

DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the English folk story of Robin Hood.
KEY ACTORS: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, Oscar Isaac, Mark Lewis Jones, Mark Addy, William Hurt, Max Von Sydow, Eileen Atkins, Danny Huston, Matthew Macfadyen, Kevin Durand, Scott Grimes

RELATED TEXTS:
- There have been countless film and TV versions of the Robin Hood story. Here are the more well-known ones: Robin Hood (a silent film starring Douglas Fairbanks), The Adventures of Robin Hood (made in 1938 and starring Errol Flynn), The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952, starring Richard Todd), Robin Hood (1973, an animated Disney film), Robin and Marian (1976, with Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as older versions of the characters), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991, starring Kevin Costner) and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (a parody version by Mel Brooks).
- This is the fifth film that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe have worked together on, the previous four being Gladiator, A Good Year, American Gangster and Body of Lies.
- Ridley Scott is no stranger to historical epics, aside from this film and Gladiator his other major swordfighting epic is Kingdom of Heaven.