When you purchase a ticket to go see a film titled Robin Hood, you expect certain things. The primary thing you expect is a sense of adventure — and recent films have proven that you can make a film both dark, as Ridley Scott has done with his latest picture, and adventurous as well. You expect to see the camaraderie of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and the sweeping romantic tale of Robin and Maid Marion. The words Robin Hood evoke images of gallantry, playful thievery, rebellion, and fun.
Ridley Scott’s latest film is none of these things. It is a dour, sleepy mess that loses the romantic setting of Nottingham to a faux-realistic historical context. It is very apparent through the 2.5-hour running time that Scott desired to make another Kingdom of Heaven, not the tale of Robin Hood, and he fails on both counts.
As I mentioned on The Golden Briefcase Podcast last night on FirstShowing.net (check it out here if you please!) Ridley Scott is a masterful director, but one who has become so precise through all of his more daring pictures such as Blade Runner and Alien and Gladiator that he has shifted into a sleepwalking state. I’m of the opinion that there are enough filmmakers churning out crap in a given year that when one man is capable of producing an American Gangster or a Black Hawk Down — films that are aesthetically wonderful but emotionally vapid, plodding and cumbersome — it is his duty to keep his directorial talent in check. Scott has failed to challenge himself in the past few years, and I fear that his return to the Alien franchise may indicate that he has come full circle into supreme capability but overriding irrelevance.
There are moments and characters in Robin Hood from which a better film shines through. What could have been if we had only spent more time with Kevin Durand’s wonderful Little John instead of interminable dicussions about King John’s taxation of England and finances and trivial, unexciting, miniscule details. In one scene, truest to the Robin Hood legend, the Merry Men and a hooded Russell Crowe surround a travelling group to steal grain for Nottingham’s fields. The moments of whimsy and the dynamics of Crowe, Durand and Scott Grimes as Will Scarlet hint at a much more enjoyable picture of Nottingham. (More after the break.)
Nothing is more frustrating than seeing glimpses of a film you’d rather watch instead of what you’re stuck with.
Instead, Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale) choose to make this at once an origin tale — one that denies Robin his bow for the majority of the running time — and to embed the tale of Nottingham in the larger historical context of England after the fall of King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston). The origin tale is undercooked: Robin has suppressed daddy issues that are conveniently and inexplicably linked to Nottingham and Marion’s father-in-law Sir Walter Loxley (Max Von Sydow), and a large portion of the second act is devoted to Robin farting around with Loxley, doing nothing.
The historical portion of the film is populated with the great performances of William Hurt, Mark Strong, and Oscar Isaac, but it overshadows everything that you truly want to see; the Sheriff of Nottingham is reduced to a footnote in a tale in which he should be a central character. Cate Blanchett gets more to do with Maid Marion, but when the film shifts into Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland territory with her character during the finale, it becomes apparent that this Robin Hood isn’t only a failure to tell the tale, but also a failure to be merely reverential to it.
Do not be fooled by the fact that, appearance-wise, this is a beautiful film — Ridley Scott is trying to sneak a sub-par piece of drivel past you with the tools he knows he’ll always command. The things he’s lost sight of are far more damaging: subtlety, character work, daring, fun. Think about Blade Runner, a film as textural, beautiful and striking as any film could hope to be. Robin Hood has that beauty, but lacks anything close to Rutger Hauer’s speech in the rain, Harrison Ford’s final moments with Sean Young, or the visceral footchase through the city streets.
I hope that moviegoers will be able to detect the difference between the two films, or even between this and Gladiator. Robin Hood is a shell, a facade of what Ridley Scott is capable of, without anything that he will be remembered for. He is a man with immense talent, and he has produced a film that showcases only a miniscule iota of it. We deserve better.
We both hated this film, but it sounds like I hated it way more. I have to say, I almost never felt like this was a beautiful appearing film. Save a couple of stellar shots of the night sky, and some fun slow-motion shots with macro lenses, the photography is fairly standard. And, on top of that, I found the art direction to be totally dry. I respect that Scott probably wanted to give a realistic look to the Robin Hood story, but it totally lacks any ability to grab my attention.
Although, it sounds like we both thought Kevin Durand was just about the only thing in this mess worth any time.
It's a pretty lonely place to be when you're the only one in the world like that actually liked 'Robin Hood'.
Ian, I'm glad we're in agreement. In retrospect, I've been pretty kind to the appearance of the film.
Erik, I forgive you because you're wonderful.
I enjoyed the movie as well. Perhaps that's only possible if one stops thinking what the movie "should" have been and tries to enjoy what it is. Why do some people go to movies wanting to dislike them, and then come whine about it on the Internet? No one cares, hippie.
I didn't go into the film intending to dislike it. I want to like every movie I see. And by the way, being blindly satisfied with what you see while failing to wish for something more is the most brain dead way to watch movies, hippie.