Robin Hood

So Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe re-team for Gladiator 2: Men in Tights. Or is it Robin Hood: Prince of Greaves? How about Kingdom of Devon?

Whatever it is, it’s mighty familiar. For a while, Brian Helgeland’s screenplay promises to deliver on its bold claim to tell the story behind the legend. In a clever piece of dramatic obfuscation he introduces us to Robin Longstride, an archer in Richard the Lionheart’s English army, plundering its way back home after a decade of Crusades.

A sharp-eyed marksman, Longstride is nevertheless an ordinary squaddie with a rum group of mates, prone to drinking and fighting, but thankfully not the raping and pillaging that usually followed back then. Robert of Loxley is a nobleman close to the king played by an actor you won’t recognise – a clear signal that something must be up. That something is the treachery of the dastardly French, here represented by Mark Strong’s Godfrey, whose plan to sow rebellion in the kingdom ahead of a French invasion begins with the murder of Loxley and the insinuation of the Lionheart’s libidinous brother John on the throne.

This is all cracking historical stuff. Longstride returns home bearing Loxley’s sword and installs himself in the Manor House at Nottingham, posing, for convenience’s sake, as the long-lost husband of proto-feminist firebrand Maid Marion. Before long, the pair have been drawn into a messy civil war, and a tender love affair. No wonder the film carries on for the best part of two and a half hours.

Shot in crystal clear digital images by the ever-efficient Scott, the film exudes professionalism in every technical department. Indeed, so effortless does it appear, the overall effect is to suggest that Robin Hood remains well within the comfort zone of its principals.

A beefed up Crowe goes through the paces as Maximus Decimus Hoodius with a convincing physicality, but we’ve seen all of this before down to the haircut. Ten years ago, the flights of arrows, the charging horses, the rousing speeches, the muddy, muted battle scenes were all breathlessly exciting – not new perhaps, but different, better. Familiarity hasn’t bred contempt, exactly, but it has flirted with indifference.

Though it initially impresses as a muscular and unexpected historical drama, Robin Hood doesn’t seem too certain what to do with itself, so it settles for being a Ridley Scott period film, and we’ve all seen plenty of those by now.

There is, of course, the obligatory stab at Relevance – an undercurrent of anti-tyranny libertarianism to tickle the ears of the film’s right wing constituents. After all: Republicans buy cinema tickets, too. But there’s something for punters of all political persuasions – ultimately Robin will move to a new hood, a tax-free utopia, yes, but one with great eco credentials and what looks like universal health care.

But you can’t really take the film too seriously, not least because Crowe’s northern/Scottish/Irish accent (delete as applicable depending on the scene) is dire, and the first sight of him in that famous green jerkin elicits quiet sniggers. Nor does it help that the film gets notably dumber as it continues, culminating in a final battle overstuffed with unlikely and ill-conceived moments shot in overwrought slow-motion close-up.

Even at his worst, though, Scott is a craftsman – an expert assembler of images and a dextrous purveyor of mood and atmosphere. At his best, he’s a master storyteller and creator of action spectacle. Robin Hood sees him at neither extreme, merely coasting somewhere in the middle.

Matt Bochenski

Anticipation:

Gladiator 2 is long overdue.

Enjoyment:

More like Kingdom of Heaven 2.

In Retrospect:

It won’t echo in eternity, that’s for sure.