Cast your mind back a few years ago. When Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe first conceived of a Robin Hood film, it was originally entitled Nottingham and would have Crowe playing the titular Sherriff, normally the enemy, the story seen through his eyes. For once we would have a different perspective and an interesting one too. What if the Sherriff of Nottingham, a man normally portrayed as being a heartless tax collector, was shown as the good guy with Robin as the enemy?
A tantalising prospect to be sure, but whether it would’ve worked or not is now null and void, for during pre-production, Scott and Crowe opted for the safer route. Upon hearing this news, I was not overly surprised if not a little disappointed. It begged the question: do we really need another film about Robin Hood? As it turns out…No.
Billed as an origin story of how the soldier of the Crusades became the famous outlaw, the opening is at least a lot of fun. Richard the Lion Heart (Danny Huston sporting his second uber beard after his cameo in Clash of the Titans) is at the end of his ten-year Crusade and Robin, a common archer, is deep in battle with his King. What follows is a battle that may not be as good as the blistering and frankly excellent opening of Gladiator (a film that easily remains Scott and Crowe’s best collaboration) but, as a piece of action cinema, it’s gripping enough. For the next twenty minutes Scott manages to pull successful action beats whilst cutting back to others in England: Marion, Prince John, Friar Tuck (who, in actual fact, is totally needless), setting up the world in which Robin will return. But once the King is slain in battle, Robin quickly returns home in the guise of a Knight. Prince John in pronounced King and immediately becomes a little shit.
From then on in, things go down the pan both in terms of the state of England and the state of the film.
The thing is, considering we’ve had the 30’s version with Errol Flynn, the 90’s one with Kevin Costner and even the Disney one where Robin’s a fox and Little John is a bear, do we really need another incarnation of Robin Hood? As stated already, no we don’t and unless you really think this new version is saying something fundamentally new about the man then, at the end of the day, the film has no purpose.
Once our hero gets back to England, the film just plods. Everyone is a walking cliché: Robin (naturally) is the hero, his merry men are the comic relief, Marion is the spunky heroine, King John is the snivelling weasel and Mark Strong, probably the only genuinely decent thing in the picture, is the really, morally bankrupt traitor. As soon as Max Von Sydow rocked up I knew he would die and you knew that, in the end, Strong’s Godfrey would get it at the hands of Robin. And as for the Sherriff of Nottingham? Well he’s been reduced to cameo status and something of a comic weasel himself.
Ultimately, it just doesn’t work. It’s long (because, apparently, films like these need to be these days), unnecessary and frightfully dull, especially during the latter half. And to top it all off, the climactic beach battle is just terrible. Horribly shot to the point of not knowing what the fuck is going on and edited to induce brain spasms. When Marion joins Robin’ army with her troupe of bandit kids (seriously, what the fuck was the deal with those kids? It’s a sub plot that is never explained) I lust laughed.
So, if you haven’t guessed yet, it aint very good. Just stick on the Disney version. At least then you can sing “Robin Hood and Little John, walkin’ though the forest…”
The Productions values are good though. Considering it was banged out in a year the scale of the piece is quite impressive.
2/5
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