Robin Hood

Did we need another Robin Hood movie? Ridley Scott thought we did. In fairness, it's been 19 years since Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the last serious Robin Hood adaptation. It's been 17 years since any Robin Hood movie at all (Robin Hood: Men in Tights being the last). But it's a story that most people know pretty well. It's a story of a man that robs from the rich to give to the poor, all the while causing headaches for the Sheriff of Nottingham and King John, and vying for the hand of the lovely Maid Marion. See? I can recite that from memory without having seen Scott's Robin Hood. After all, I've seen Disney's Robin Hood, and I've seen Errol Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood. In fact, Robin Hood has been portrayed on either the silver screen or the television screen over 110 times, which I'd imagine has to be more than just about any other character. So when the trailer promised us the "untold story" of the legend, I was a bit skeptical. I think it's safe to say that we've seen this story told in almost every way imaginable. I was mistaken, however. I had failed to realize that the story hadn't been told in such a boring fashion yet.


Outside of just sapping the fun from this franchise, the tagline isn't inaccurate. Robin Hood is meant to be more of an origin story for the legendary character, and Scott presents a very historical view (keeping in mind that the character is pure fiction) of Robin. In this, Robin (Russell Crowe) is actually a man named Robin Longstride, and not Sir Robert Loxley (Douglas Hodge) as he was in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Robin is an archer and soldier in King Richard the Lionheart's (Danny Huston) army. The army is on its way back from the Crusades when it attacks a French stronghold. Richard is killed, and Robert Loxley is tasked with taking the crown back to England. Robin, meanwhile, had been placed in the stockades for telling the King that God wouldn't be pleased with the Crusades. One of the other soldiers frees Robin and his men from the stockades, and they leave early to get back to England. Loxley is ambushed by soldiers under the command of Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong), an English knight who had been secretly plotting to assassinate the king and allow King Philip of France to invade. Godfrey's trying to find the crown and kills Loxley, but before he can find it his men are ambushed by Robin and his men. Robin finds the crown, and before Loxley dies, he requests that Robin take his sword back to Loxley's father in Nottingham. Robin take the crown and goes back to England, deciding to take on Loxley's name so that he isn't suspected of killing the King. No one seems to notice the difference at the castle except for Godfrey, nor do they notice in Nottingham except for Loxley's widow, Marion (Cate Blanchett). Loxley's father, Walter (Max von Sydow) receives the sword and asks for Robin to keep his ruse up around the village, so that Marion can keep her land. If he does this, Walter will give him the sword that Robin brought back. Meanwhile, Godfrey decides that Robin knows too much and that he needs to die. That's all set against the backdrop of King John (Oscar Isaac) being a terrible king while Philip's forces prepare to invade.

This doesn't seem like it should be a boring movie. There's a lot going on in it. There's at least three or four different story lines occurring at any one time. What makes the story boring is in its execution. There are long lulls in which almost nothing happens on the screen that elicits an emotion or does anything other than move the plot forward. All of the fighting occurs in the first twenty minutes, and in the last twenty or so. The middle hundred or so minutes serve as an uninteresting character drama, featuring wooden performances by Crowe and Blanchett, a borderline hammish performance by Isaac, and absolutely none of the banter or shenanigans that makes Robin Hood a character that has been revisited so much. No, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood is a dour man who mopes whenever his father is mentioned. And despite Robin's presentation as a superlative archer, he's shown as being a completely average archer in Robin Hood. Intentional or not, he's shown as a much more prolific swordsman than anything else. We rarely see Robin bust out his bow, and the only scene that shows off his archery skills happens in the movie's waning moments. I understand that the movie is called Robin Hood, and that he's referred to as Robin by name throughout the movie. If it weren't for those things, I'd have had no idea who this character was or what movie I was watching. That's not a the "untold story" of a legend. That's a movie about an entirely different person.

To make matters worse, the budding relationship between Robin and Marion and the unusual circumstances it comes out of is supposed to be the emotional center of the movie, but it falls flat when it's doing well. Other times, it's downright painful to watch. There's almost zero chemistry between Crowe and Blanchett. If Blanchett does anything but openly despise Russell Crowe, it certainly doesn't show on the screen. I understand that her character spends a good part of the movie disliking Crowe's character, but at some point, the script calls for those emotions to soften and change. It never does. Blanchett portrays Marion as an icy, shrew of a woman and she stays consistent with that through the very end, despite her character's change of heart regarding Robin. There's never a warm and tender moment between those actors. In fact, if someone told me that Crowe spent all his time between scenes verbally abusing Blanchett, I wouldn't be at all surprised. In this telling of the Robin Hood story, those are the only two characters that are supposed to share anything resembling an emotional bond. They don't.

There are moments that are groan-inducing bad in Robin Hood. That two or three of those moments happen during the film's climax is all the more disappointing in a movie that doesn't skimp on the disappointment to begin with. How does Marion ride into battle, kill a few men, get grabbed and tossed off of her horse, and nearly drown because she can't physically stand up? Why does Russell Crowe need to let out a guttural roar when it would be completely ridiculous and cliche to do so? Why does Philip's invasion force show up in boats that look like they should be carrying World War II troops to the shores of Normandy instead of hanging out in a Robin Hood movie? Why does Walter Loxley have an inscription on his sword that Robin's father apparently devised and carved into a stone? I don't expect answers to these questions. I expect a Robin Hood movie to not present them. On the plus side? At least Robin has a British accent in Robin Hood.

While doing research, I found that the original idea for Robin Hood was to tell the story we're all used to from the Sheriff of Nottingham's perspective. It would have painted Robin Hood in a much less sympathetic light than we're used to. I wish that movie would have been made instead. Even if it would've been just as bad as Robin Hood was, it would've actually felt fresh and original. Instead, we got a movie that was terrible on top of being boring and unoriginal.