When I was young we owned a series of children's classic books that included Robin Hood. I loved that Robin Hood book and reread it countless times. No movie or television version of the Hooded Man has ever lived up to my memory of the stories told in that book. Sure, Errol Flynn's version is great and the 1980s ITV series of Robin of Sherwood was really good, but they still failed to fire my imagination to the same heights. And the less said about Kevin Costner's portrayal and the pathetic recent BBC series the better. I wish I could say that Ridley Scott's interpretation with Russell Crowe as Robin Hood was finally the version the met my expectations, but I can't. In fact, although his version is a superior film to many other takes on Robin, it actually bears very little resemblance to the original legend apart from the names.
The movie starts with Robin Longstride, a common archer in King Richard's army, returning with the King and the army to England. Richard is keen to earn some money on the way home so he pillages as he travels. He pillages one time too many though and ends up dead. Not before locking up Robin for speaking his mind about the innocence of the Muslims that they'd killed in the Holy Land (which seems like a much too modern sentiment for the film thrown in so as not to offend Muslims). After Richard's death Robin escapes and ends up back in England disguised as Sir Robert of Loxley and carrying the King's Crown, which he picked up along the way along with the disguise.
Instead of living the life of an outlaw in Sherwood Forest, Robin ends up living in a castle in Nottingham with the Loxleys where he'd traveled to return a sword. Robert's father wants Robin, whom he takes a shine to, to pretend to be his son so that he will have a male heir and his daughter-in-law Marian won't be kicked off the estate upon his death. Marian doesn't take to the idea right away, but soon warms to it and Robin.
Although King John is around and as big a dick as he's usually portrayed to be in these stories, the Sheriff of Nottingham is only briefly shown and mainly as a joke. The real villain of the film is Godfrey (played by Mark Strong who's making a career lately of playing villains). Godfrey is an Englishman who is betraying his people to the French for no very strongly given reason. His actions however lead to a sort of medieval D-Day with the French storming the beaches of England.
I actually generally enjoyed this movie, but I kept waiting for it to become a Robin Hood movie. I assumed that once Robin and his band returned to England that they would end up in Sherwood robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, but they don't. In fact there's only one scene in the film that comes close to that when they rob a cart of grain from some churchmen. It isn't until the very last scene of the movie that it comes close to looking anything like the more traditional Robin Hood film that I came to see, but I didn't want to have to wait until the sequel to actually see it.
The cast is all fine, but uninspired. Crowe and Blanchett are both great actors but their parts aren't very demanding. Robin's merry men provide some comic relief but are only given very minor roles. William Hurt shows up in a small role for some baffling reason. Were all the English character actors busy that weekend? The leads are already being played by Aussies, couldn't the rest of the cast at least be played by Brits?
Scott does know how to stage action sequences and the battles are well done. There should have been more of them, but the ones that are in the movie are well filmed and executed.
I've accepted that I'm never going to see a Robin Hood movie that lives up to my childhood memories I just hoped that this one would get a lot closer to them than it did.
