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Movie Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR" Rutkowski
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Directed by:
Ridley Scott |
Written by:
Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris, Brian Helgeland |
Starring:
Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow |
Running time:
131 minutes
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Released:
05/14/10 |
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Rated PG-13
for violence including
intense sequences of warfare, and some sexual content. |
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" ...“Robin Hood” is unkempt and frayed around the edges, but the fortitude
of the film is surprisingly sincere..."
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Roughly 2 years ago, when word leaked that Ridley
Scott ("Kingdom of Heaven," "Black Hawk Down," "Gladiator," "Thelma and Louise,"
"Blade Runner," "Alien") and Russell Crowe were planning on their fifth
collaboration, a medieval epic no less, one part "Kingdom of Heaven," one part
"Gladiator," rejoicing was heard all across the Internet. Okay, that might be a
slight exaggeration, but the hope was certainly there for another literate epic
from Scott and Russell. Early reports suggested the film would center on the
Sheriff of Nottingham from the Robin Hood legend. Secondary reports suggested a
shift: the focus would remain on the Sheriff of Nottingham, not as the
tax-collecting villain familiar to everyone, but as a hero-in-disguise. Scott
and Crowe eventually discarded those ideas for yet another take on Robin Hood,
this time as an origin/behind the legend story.
That may have been what Scott and Crowe intended, but what they delivered is so
far removed from Robin Hood as popularized in dozens of films and television
shows, but principally through The Adventures of Robin Hood, the 1938
swashbuckler directed by William Keighley and Michael Curtiz starring Errol
Flynn at the height of his career. This Robin, not Sir Robin of Loxley as in
earlier versions, but Robin Longstride, the commoner son of a literate
stonemason, serves King Richard the Lionheart’s (Danny Huston) as an archer and
fought in the Crusades. Now, a decade later, Richard and the remains of his army
return from the Crusades, exhausted, eager to pillage and plunder.
Unluckily for the French, they stand between Richard, his army, and the ships
waiting on the coast that will transport them back to England. When they lay
siege to a castle, Richard is carelessly shot by an archer. He dies from an
arrow to the neck. The army in disarray, Longstride and his men, Will Scarlet
(Scott Grimes), Allan A'Dayle (Alan Doyle), and Little John (Kevin Durand),
decide to strike out for the coast on their own. On the way, they encounter a
band of French soldiers, fresh from ambushing the English knights transporting
Richard’s belongings, including his crown, back to England. To honor the dying
wish of Sir Robert Loxley (Douglas Hodge), Robin and his men disguise themselves
as knights (a crime punishable by death under English law).
After delivering the crown to Richard’s brother, Prince John (Oscar Isaac),
Robin briefly meets the king’s senior advisor, William Marshal (William Hurt),
quickly leaving London before someone identifies him as an imposter. In
Nottingham, Robin encounters Loxley’s widow, Marion (Cate Blanchett), and
Loxley’s blind father, Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow). The now son-less man
decides to “adopt” Robin as his long-lost son (Robert hadn’t returned in a
decade). Robin’s subterfuge, however, brings him to the attention of King John’s
chief enforcer, Godfrey (Mark Strong), a double-dealing villain manipulating
King John to overtax his subjects, including the nobles, and start a civil war,
thus leaving a weakened England incapable of defending itself against a French
invasion.
Scott, working from a screenplay by Brian Helgeland (Salt,
Green Zone, Man on
Fire, Payback, The Postman, Conspiracy Theory), plays up the court intrigue,
power politics aspects of 13th-century (not 12th-century) Europe, sometimes at
the expense of coherence, logic, and, of course, actual history. The real
Richard the Lionheart spent little time in England, knew little (Old) English,
living primarily on the English crown’s estates in France. Not surprisingly,
nationalism, with clearly defined ethnic, cultural, and social groups, clearly
demarcated borders, and tradition, didn’t exist to the extent they did in the
later half of the millennium. The French-English conflict over territory (as
usual) was primarily a conflict between ruling dynasties, not between
nation-states which trace their existence to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648)
that ended decades of war.
Then again, no one should have been expecting historical accuracy, let alone a
history lesson, from another iteration of the Robin Hood tale. While Scott and
Helgeland bring out the ambiguities and complexities (if only briefly) in
Richard’s leadership, the Prince (later King) John we meet is the same venal,
self-interested, unfit-for-monarch recognizable from previous versions of the
Robin Hood tale. Unsurprisingly given Scott’s involvement, the good king/bad
king dynamic between Richard and John is reminiscent of the similar dynamic
between Marcus Aurelius and Commodus in Gladiator (Aurelius and Commodus are
father and son, rather than the sibling rivalry found in Robin Hood, of course).
Whether Scott and Helgeland depict Richard and John accurately (an open question
best left to academics), the French in Robin Hood are uniformly depicted
one-dimensionally, as territory-hungry villains devoid of honor. In Robin Hood,
nothing says villainy like speaking French or sporting a cleanly shaved head.
Godfrey, already looking the part of villain thanks to Mark Strong’s presence
(he played the principal antagonist in Sherlock Holmes, Kick-Ass, and will essay
a similar role in next year’s big-screen adaptation of Green Lantern), speaks
French, collaborates with the French king, and preys on English peasants and
barons with a contingent of French soldiers. How no one seems to notice French
soldiers on English soil is one of those mysteries Scott and Helgeland leave
unanswered.
As for the Robin Hood, he doesn’t take on that name until the end of the film
which leaves us where most Robin Hood stories begin, with Hood an outlaw from
King (or Prince, depending on Richard the Lionheart’s fate) John’s vengeance,
living in Sherwood Forest with his Merry Men and Marion, building a utopian
society based on liberty, equality, and fraternity (the French motto, by the
way). Like Maximus before him, Hood’s beliefs bear little resemblance to those
commonly held in the 13th century and in his platitude-heavy speech-making he
sounds like Braveheart, Maximus, or even a modern politician (i.e., ultimately
signifying nothing), making him an all-purpose hero against tyranny and
injustice that right, left, and everyone in the muddled middle can call their
own.
Not surprisingly, Scott once again delivers on well-choreographed action scenes,
opening with the siege of a French castle and closing with a battle between the
English and the French on an English beach. Crowe plays Hood as a brooder, a
war-weary veteran who wants nothing more of violence and struggle (but gets it
anyway). Cate Blanchett makes a suitably strong-willed Marion. Thankfully, she’s
no damsel-in-distress, but Scott goes too far in the other direction, making her
a warrior woman eager to fight in battle as an equal. This leads to a
particularly misjudged third-act plot development, but luckily it’s one of
"Robin Hood’s" few story-related problems, the others being the one-dimensional
depiction of the French and Robin’s muddled backstory, that do little to hamper
Scott and Crowe’s latest big-screen collaboration. “Robin Hood” is unkempt and
frayed around the edges, but the fortitude of the film is surprisingly sincere.
It doesn’t frolic like Flynn, delight like Disney, or annoy like Costner, but
this rewiring of the Robin Hood fable splatters around the muck agreeably,
hitting soaring points of romance, villainy, and daredevil archery, sold with
atypical vigor from the traditionally reliable Ridley Scott. |
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ROBIN HOOD
© 2010 Universal Pictures
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2010 Alternate Reality, Inc.
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