Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” is a serious, boldly filmed drama, historically accurate as far as any film with the words “Robin” and “Hood” in the title can be, which isn’t much, and stocked with some of the finest modern actors to grace recent cinema. Russell Crowe is our bow-and-arrow titular hero, and Cate Blanchett is Maid Marian, with Danny Houston as King Richard. The film is gorgeous, bursting with detail, and must have cost a fortune. It’s also an utter fucking bore.
Painfully plotted and paced, this “Robin Hood” sucks every ounce of adventure, fun and daring out of the classic tale that pretty much created the whole idea of adventurous, fun and daring tales. This is no story of Sherwood Forrest or Merry Men, or of robbing the rich to feed the poor. No. This is a bloody war film about the evil Crusades and colonialism, fanatical religion gone nuts, and what made Robin Hood into Robin Hood, and a war-burdened superpower levying sinfully high taxes against its own people to pay the bill of sword and horse. Yeah, U.S. Bush-era politics! I can’t get enough of that. And this is a summer major box office film, too.
Crowe doesn’t resemble a starved, war-haunted rebel in the making. Dude looks glum and pissy, and a bit beefy. His Robin hit a lot of bars while killing Muslims, although he’s sure sorry for it. The killing. Not the drinking. Blanchett is at least having fun poking fingers at past Marians who became damsels in distress, yelling for “Robin!!” to save their victim ass. Wait, sorry, Robin again has to save Marian's victim ass, and during a slow-motion battle that copies “Saving Private Ryan” down to the soldiers drowning on a blood-soaked beach. Violent for a PG-13.
When did Ridley Scott become a dull film artist? Where is the guy who made “Alien” and “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator” -- films I could watch endlessly? The action here has been splintered to smithereens, and this whole ultra-serious moodiness and mud and blood, this religious devotion to detail and making 1199 look like hell on earth … it made me wonder what Michael Bay could do with a faster, louder, livelier, more vulgar screenplay. I can’t believe I just wrote that. (See, or don’t, Scott’s equally dull “Body of Lies.”)
It’s sad when I can say Kevin Costner’s “Robin Hood” is a better adaptation, but it is true. That Robin at least had a personality. Even if the ha-ha British accent in that 1991 summer flick was shit. Crowe's sourpuss is as flat as the perfectly decorated sword he welds, ceaselessly without end. His hunger from “Gladiator” is not here. Alan Rickman’s hilariously evil Sheriff of Nottingham could wipe the floor with the half-dozen villains employed in this footless reboot, especially Matthew Macfadyen’s snooze-vile Sheriff. Mark Strong is the lead villain, and William Hurt appears, but I can’t recall who he played. There’s just so little to remember anything.
Seek out Warner Bros. classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood” from 1938 –- you know the one, Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Technicolor, green tights, and more fun than any movie made then or since. This new “Robin Hood” -– which ends with a shout out for a sequel -– should be outlawed. Attempted murder of a legend. D+
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