Movie Review - Robin Hood
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(4 votes, average: 3.25 out of 4)
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2010 / 140 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” claims to be a “dark” version of the tale, unlike so many. It seems they think we still associate Robin Hood with green tights and a feathery cap, a’la Errol Flynn in 1938’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood”. But this claim rings pretty hollow when you compare Scott’s latest film with the dueling Hoods of 1991. Both Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and Patrick Bergin’s (remember him? Neither, it seems, does anyone else) simply titled “Robin Hood” boasted just as much grit and alleged darkness as this one. In fact, I’d argue that “Prince of Thieves” was darker than this film. For one thing, it had devil worshippers and an army of pagan Celts (who, as Alan Rickman helpfully pointed out, “drink the blood of the dead”). It also had an equally muddy and dirty production design…though I think the sun was visible more often than it is in Ridley’s version. On a side note, if you love the Robin Hood story and dislike the sun, then I would suggest seeking out Patrick Bergin’s “Robin Hood”, a film that was supposed to be shown in theaters but was beaten to the punch by Costner’s version and therefore premiered on Fox television. In that film, the whole of England was covered in darkness until evil was vanquished at the end, at which point the sun finally emerged from the clouds, basking everyone in its glory. Incidentally, Bergin makes a fine Robin Hood and the film, as a whole, is pretty decent. It’s got great villianous turns by Jereon Krabbe and Jurgen Prochnow and Uma Thurman makes for a lovely Maid Marian (although she convincingly disguises herself as a teenaged boy for a good portion of the film). In short (well, short-ish) any claims Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” makes toward pushing the grime and violence envelope of this story are about nineteen years too late. Scott’s film is, however, darker than “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” AND the Disney version in which Robin Hood was played by an animated fox.
Though it doesn’t outdo the other Robin Hoods I mention in the “dark and gritty” department, it does make good on its promise to show us a version of the story we haven’t seen before. Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” starts before Robin and his merry men were doing battle with Prince John and his dastardly underling The Sheriff of Nottingham. Before they had to fight those fiends, it seems that Robin and friends first had to stop a French invasion.
The movie begins at the tail end of the Crusades with King Richard leading his men home from the Middle East (and pillaging every castle he finds along the way). Robin is a skilled yet peasant archer within his army who deserts during one siege too many and heads home with a few close friends in tow. On the way, however, he encounters a dying noble who gives Robin his sword on condition that Robin take it home to his aging father. After some deliberation, Robin takes the sword to its rightful owner and even takes the dead son’s place in the nobleman’s household. Decades of taxes levied to fund Richard’s “foreign adventures” have left England penniless and pissed off and the nobleman believes that if Robin pretends to be his dead son (Robert of Loxsley) then they will be able to hold off Prince John’s (soon to be King John) tax collectors from repossessing the estate.
At the same time, however, one of Prince John’s trusted associates (a man named Godfrey) has made a deal with the French to sow civil unrest within England, splitting its forces against one another and leaving the country ripe for French forces to conquer. With John’s selfish and holier-than-thou (literally) attitude and seemingly unquenchable thirst for money and power, Godfrey’s job is fairly easy. All he has to do, as John’s new tax collector, is brutalize the populace in addition to taking their money.
Unlike so many blockbusters that pass off a series of lame convolutions as plot, “Robin Hood” actually has a solid story and it tells it in an engaging, straightforward manner. It also resists the temptation to deal in simple black and white terms to create more intense drama. Even the villians of the piece get a fairly even-handed depiction. John may be a selfish prick but, then again, so is Richard. Prince John is simply a larger douchebag than his more charismatic brother. And Godfrey, well played by Mark Strong (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite modern character actors), is a duplicitious prick but he’s not outright evil. He’s more like Eastwood in “A Fistful of Dollars”, a man with a mercenary streak who plays both sides of a conflict to fatten his own wallet. Even the French invaders don’t seem all that bad. Their leader seems neither more nor less of a money-grubbing jerk than either of the English kings. I found that this even-handed, shades-of-gray approach served the material nicely and set it apart from most historical epics of this sort.
Another aspect of “Robin Hood” that I enjoyed was the portrayal of its hero. Russell Crowe makes for a far more down-to-earth Robin than his predecessors. This is probably because he’s simply a common soldier forced to masquerade as a down-on-his-luck nobleman and not an outlawed nobleman as Robin is in every other telling. Whatever the reason, Crowe makes him a very accessible and likable character with a minimum of effort. Even Lady Marian (Cate Blanchett) is fairly salt of the earth. She’s the widow of a nobleman but their estate has gone to seed (even though a major part of the plot has them struggling to acquire seeds) and steadily-increasing taxes have put their fortunes only slightly above those of Nottingham’s other residents. The relationship between Robin and Marian is wonderfully low-key. They’re just two cynical and world-weary souls slowly learning to trust one another, not some grand passionate romance amplified into melodrama.
As the love story between Robin and Marian illustrates, “Robin Hood” is a very low-key film. That is one of its greatest assets but it also, unfortunately, one of the reasons it doesn’t stir the blood quite as well as other cinematic takes on this legend. Everything in this movie feels strangely weightless. Even the central conflict between England and France lacks a certain gravity. Ridley and his cast and crew seem more interested in the charming byplay between Robin and his band of merry men (which is, admittedly, one of the best things about the film) than they do in large battle scenes. This movie is more “Robin and Marian” (the fine middle-aged Robin Hood film from the 70’s starring Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn and Robert Shaw) than “Prince of Thieves” which would be fine if, like “Robin and Marian”, it simply didn’t bother with the action stuff. The battle sequences are clumsily and often incoherently staged. Even worse, they feel rote and unnecessary. There’s nothing in them that we haven’t seen in previous films. The opening castle siege feels like the beginning of Paul Verhoeven’s “Flesh and Blood” only without the visceral immediacy of that film. The end battle feels like the beginning of “Saving Private Ryan” only with horses and slightly more antiquated boats. The action sequences have all been done and, frankly, they’ve all been done better. Scott’s interest and passion definitely seem to lie in the little, human moments of the film and he makes those moments stirring.
This “Robin Hood” is more about people than pageantry. And I like that. I love the playful camaraderie between Robin, Little John (Kevin Durand, who does good work here), Will Scarlet (an effective Scott Grimes), and Allan A’Dayle (Alan Doyle). I like Allan’s little musical interludes during their journey. I love the slow build of the romance between Robin and Marian (though the film’s attempts at making Marian into a full-on action hero fall flat and actually distract from Blanchett’s otherwise fine, world-weary performance). I love Friar Tuck (the delightful Mark Addy from “The Full Monty” and “A Knight’s Tale”) and his bees. It’s rare to find a movie during blockbuster season that’s so invested in little human moments and developing characters. I merely wish the action sequences throbbed with the same passion and heart. For that, a viewer would be better served by Errol Flynn’s “The Adventures of Robin Hood” or Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves“, two versions of the tale that didn’t boast such fine character work but did feature plenty of vibrant, stirring action .
