68) Robin Hood

Robin Hood (2010)


Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, Oscar Isaac, William Hurt, Max Von Sydow, Danny Huston, Mark Addy, Kevin Durand, Scott Grimes, Alan Doyle, Douglas Hodge, Matthew Macfadyen

Despite going to the movies reasonably often it occurred to me that I don't do a particularly good job of taking advantage of tight-arse Tuesdays (for those unaware movie tickets are substantially cheaper on Tuesdays). So I decided be a bit more organised and go and see the new Ridley and Russ epic Robin Hood today.

When King Richard the Lionheart (Huston) is killed in battle in France on his way back from the Crusades, Robin Longstride (Crowe), along with Will Scarlett (Grimes), Alan A'Dayle (Doyle) and Little John (Durand), decide to abandon the Crusades and try and make their own way home. On their way they come across an English envoy under ambush on route to return the crown to England. The dying Robert Loxley (Hodge) requests that Robin return his sword to his father Sir Walter Loxley (Von Sydow). By impersonating Loxley and the knights of the envoy, Robin and his men find passage back to England. On returning the sword, Sir Walter encourages Robin to continue posing as Robert Loxley, pretending to be the husband of his daughter in law Marian (Blanchett), so as to prevent their land being confiscated by the crown. Meanwhile, the newly crowned King John (Isaac) raises taxes to fill his coffers, giving the job of collecting those taxes to his childhood friend Godfrey (Strong). But unbeknown to John, Godfrey is in cahoots with the King of France and is using the pretence of collecting taxes in order to stir up a civil war in England, destabilising the nation for French invasion.

When this movie first came onto the radar it looked like being something very different, and a lot more daring. If you think back a couple of years you may remember hearing that Ridley and Russ were teaming up to make a reversal of the traditional Robin Hood story in which the Sheriff of Nottingham, played by Crowe, was to be the hero. The film was supposed to be called 'Nottingham'. Then things started to change. At one stage there was talk that Crowe would actually be playing both the Sheriff of Nottingham and Robin Hood, obviously making some sort of 'different but the same' statement about the hero and the lawman. However, by the time the film hit the screen last week, what we have ended up with is a fairly conventional epic, even if it is not a traditional telling of the Robin Hood story.

It has become the thing to do these days if you are adapting a famous story that has been told before, that rather than do a traditional telling you make an origins story. This is exactly what we see in Robin Hood, the story of how Robin Longstride became the famous folk hero outlaw. The story itself is interesting enough, although the pacing of this film is at times a bit slow. There are pockets of the film in which it feels like nothing is happening even though when you think about it things are. However it is important to note that this is not solely an origins story as is that it is impossible for the traditional Robin Hood narrative to follow on after it. There are certain things which happen in this film which are incompatible with being followed by the traditional story. A simple example being that King Richard dies early in this film, whereas he returns at the end of the traditional narrative. Rather Robin Hood is a recasting of the legend. In an interview I saw with Crowe he insisted that he and Ridley had been working with the idea that everything the audience thought they knew about Robin Hood was an understandable mistake.

I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago about this film and he said he was unlikely to see it because he felt he had already seen it when it was called Gladiator. Having seen the film there is a similarity there. Like Gladiator, Robin Hood is visually amazing. Ridley Scott is back in epic mode for the first time since 2005's Kingdom of Heaven. The costumes and locations are fantastic and give the legend an authenticity that helps really bring it to life. There are some really good set pieces, the most notable being the final battle sequence at the cliffs of Dover.

A lot of people I'd talked to thought Russell Crowe was going to be too old to play this part, but having seen his performance, and the type of character that Scott and writer Brian Helgeland wanted Robin Hood to be, I think he was quite good. Robin Longstride was supposed to have been away for ten years on the Crusades so it would have looked strange if he was played by a handsome young buck. While there are similarities between Robin Hood and Gladiator, Crowe is not simply rehashing a character. Robin has much more of a twinkle in his eye than Maximus ever did and is driven by his moral sense of duty rather than a need for vengeance. I'm also sure that Crowe's wife was pleased to see him take a role which required him to get in shape rather than another role which required him to put on some weight (see Body of Lies, American Gangster). Cate Blachett is good as always (actually having seen her in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull maybe "as always" may no longer be an applicable statement) playing a slightly different Maid Marian than we are used to. It seems to be common in these recastings of traditional stories to transform the lead female characters who were traditionally damsels in distress into stronger, heroine figures, almost the equal of the hero they are the love interest for (for another example see Keira Knightly as a very Xena: Warrior Princess looking Guinevere in King Arthur). Thus, not only do we see Marian as the morally strong leader of her community and protector of her aging father, but she also pulls on a helmet for the final battle scene. However in a cast with a number of recognisable names the real scene stealer though is the relatively unknown Oscar Isaac as Prince/King John. Isaac puts in a great performance as a truly hateable character, managing to perfectly capture the ambitiousness, jealousy and arrogant sense of entitlement of the insecure younger brother of the widely admired, but in many ways equally flawed, Richard the Lionheart.

Robin Hood is not going to wow you like Gladiator, if we want to continue with Gladiator being the obvious point of comparison, but it is still a good movie. Robin Hood is a solid four stars kind of movie, it isn't going to blow you away but at the same time there is a lot to like about it.