Robin Hood (*½)

Directed by: Ridley Scott

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

Seen: May 20^th 2010

*½ Out of ****

With so much star power both in front of and behind the cameras, I can think of no reason why a movie can go as wrong as Robin Hood does. I found a full complement of two short scenes in the entire movie to be moving or touching, with all the rest a hashed up dilution of all the big war/conflict/epic movies of the last 15 years. You can truly play spot the movie reference in Robin Hood, with scenes lifted from Braveheart (riding his horse past his army before going into battle), Gladiator (among other things, the music sounds oddly and suspiciously familiar), Pearl Harbor (soldiers’ bodies floating in water during battle), Saving Private Ryan (beach landing before battle), The Patriot (burning of building full of civilians), Lord of the Flies (orphaned children with masks frolicking in the forest), a good few slapstick comedies, and many more. There is also barely any reference to the legendary archery mastery of Robin Hood himself, except for one in the lame duck ending with a long distance arrow acting as the nail to secure the warrant for Robin Hood’s arrest to a tree.

The list of movie references should definitely not be taken as a good thing, as these elements were thrown into a blender together with the entire Indian Ocean, and poured through a script machine to produce this drivel. There are some cinematographic highlights during the movie, such as a sweeping vista when the cavalry rides to war and a ship struggling at sea, which elevates the rating to *½, instead of it only being *. At times it’s difficult to hear what the characters are saying and I can’t say whether this is in their attempts at English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh accents, or because of bad enunciation. Several times during the movie a friend and I were confused as to where exactly we are now and what’s going on, as the story jumps around between France and England and the plotting villains and their plans being thwarted only for it to come alive again and so on and so forth, there is no cohesion in the telling of this origins story.

Robin Longstride (Crowe) is an archer in the army of King Richard the Lionheart (Huston), and his fellow soldiers include Little John (Durand) and Will Scarlett (Grimes). King Richard is ransacking his way across France back to England while his brother, Prince John (Isaac), is enjoying life in London. Godfrey (Strong,) is plotting with Prince John to overthrow Richard before he reaches England, but Godfrey has dealings with the French as well, whichever side butters his toast better. When King Richard is killed in battle, his Knights head home, but are killed in an ambush by Godfrey’s men. Sir Robert Loxley survives for long enough to give Robin Longstride his sword and ask him to take it home to his father, Sir Walter Loxley (Von Sydow). Robin and his merry gang of men (lightly hinted upon in the movie) head towards Nottingham with the bad news, and upon delivery Sir Walter asks Robin to pose as Sir Robert in a last ditch attempt to keep the land they own from King John’s tax coffers. Marion Loxley (Blanchett) at first can’t stand Robin, but as is the case with romantic subplots, she is obliged to fall in love with him eventually.

As Godfrey and his invading French horde keeps wrecking England, the losing barons start forming an army, which is eventually lead into battle by Robin Longstride, a battle replete with ideas lifted from other movies, and when King John realises the people has more respect for Robin Longstride than for him (probably the result of them falling for a ridiculously laborious speech about giving the people liberty), he turns around and declares Longstride, now Robin of the Hood, as an outlaw.

Robin Hood is a bad rehash of a long list of much better movies that makes Clive Owen’s King Arthur look like a grand epic in comparison. Hollywood is testing us, and we shouldn’t stand for this – the world must know: Robin Hood is a very bad movie.