Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
5/15/10
“The script want
through many, many changes. But to me, really, it's more about the
visuals. It's the Gladiator version of Robin Hood.”
-Robin Hood
producer Brian Grazer in Entertainment Weekly's Summer Movie Preview
I'd
say I hope to never again read an interview where someone connected with
a new Robin Hood movie utters some variation on “Our Robin's not some prissy
in tights, he's a man's man!” but that would mean I'm gonna get hit by
a bus within the next five years, so I'll grin and bear it. In a
business that always struggles to reconcile a need to cannibalize the properties
of the past and a white-knuckle terror that those properties will be laughed
out of town because of their datedness, no classic film has been more defamed
by its remakers than The Adventures of Robin Hood. That 1938
masterpiece is remembered, depending upon your disposition, either as one
of the greatest of all American films, or for Errol Flynn's green tights.
Recent films about the noble bandit who robs from the rich and gives to
the poor have tended to, well, suck, in part because of their hesitation
to embrace a story that is, depending upon your disposition, either awesome
or quaint. Robin Hood goes one step farther and tosses out
the entire story in favor of a medieval version of Lost's Sideways
World: characters have the same names and a few of the attributes
we associate with the residents of Sherwood Forrest, but only in its closing
moments does the film even begin to be about, you know, Robin Hood.
Some will call it an origin story: I'll counter with “cynical slapping
of a famous name on an unrelated story”. All of which would be meaningless
if the tale concocted by Brian Helgeland, Ethan Reiff, Cyrus Voris and
countless uncredited others were not so laughably bad. The best efforts
of an all-star cast both in front of and behind the camera can do nothing
to change the fact that Robin Hood alternates moments pointless,
boring and godawful. Yes, it's exactly like Gladiator, except
that it's no good.
The
crusade of Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston, reigning king of the cameo
as a famous character) has come to a disastrous end and his army limps
back toward England in shame, sacking castle after castle for the resources
to continue. Richard and his right-hand Sir Robert Loxley (Douglas
Hodge) walk among his men in search of one who's honest enough to speak
the truth to his King. He finds him in Robin Longstride (Russell
Crowe), who confirms the disgrace of their butchery in the Middle East
and ends up in stocks as a result. Once Richard is killed in battle,
Robin and three cohorts escape, hoping to make it back to England ahead
of the mass of returning soldiers. They come upon the scene when
Loxely lays dying: tasked with returning Richard's crown to England,
he was ambushed by forces led by Godfrey (Mark Strong), an alleged ally
of Prince John (Oscar Issac) secretly working for French King Philip II
(mysteriously, I can't find the name of the actor who played him anywhere)
to undermine John as the new King. It's Philip's plan to incite English
Civil War, allowing an easy French invasion. Robin speaks to the
dying Loxley and promises him he'll return his sword to his father Walter
(Max von Sydow). In exchange, Robin and his men are able to claim
the fortune and safe passage that comes with the Knight costumes they steal
from the dead men on the scene. Upon Robin's arrival at the Loxley
home in Nottingham, he meets Robin's wife Marion (Cate Blanchett) and receives
an offer from Sir Walter: pretend to be Loxley to help keep the tax
collectors at bay. Robin accepts, and with the help of his friends
Little John (Kevin Durand), Will Scarlett (Scott Grimes), Allan A'Dayle
(Alan Doyle) and Friar Tuck (Mark Addy), does a little robbing from the
rich so the Loxley crops can be planted. As he learns more about
his secret past, Robin realizes he has a destiny to intervene in the coming
struggle: if England doesn't stand together, Philip's forces will
defeat them all.
While
it's a little slow, the first hour or so of Robin Hood is not unpromising.
Crowe puts his considerable star power behind the role, and he, Durand,
Grimes and Doyle make a fine team. There's a lot of spring in the
step of their interaction and both Issac as the odious King and Strong
as his duplicitous henchman are quite good. But once the movie actually
reaches Nottingham, the wheels start to rattle. The arrangement between
Robin Longstride and the Loxleys is more the stuff of a bad romantic comedy
than a summer adventure, and the movie implodes once Robin learns the truth
about his lineage. This inspires one of those “I didn't really just
see that scene, did I?” moments where Robin walks in on a meeting of the
armies of John and the Barons who oppose his brutal taxes and stages what
we'll call the Great Robin Hood/King John Debate of 1215. It seems
(SPOILER ALERT!) Robin's father wrote the Magna Carta and had it
lying around waiting for some King or other to sign, and Robin's eloquent
speech convinces the King (albeit with his fingers crossed behind his back)
and the Barons to put aside their differences and face their common foe
for a climactic blowout on the beach. Like the Gladiator version
of Saving Private Ryan!
This
scene is so awful the movie cannot recover from it, and I watched the final
half hour with the distance of a cinematic out of body experience.
At this point, Helgeland et al begin throwing everything they can find
into the pot hoping to galvanize every possible viewer (“There's Marion
in the army! And kids too!”) while I wondered more and more why I
was supposed to care about the battle to save weasely King John's worthless
throne. “Protect the King!” loyal good guy William Marshal (William
Hurt, consistently serious, but never much engaged) calls out at one point
and I couldn't help but wonder if the film REALLY expected me to care.
And then, with maybe three minutes to go, the movie decides it's really
a prequel and then mockingly asks me to pay what will probably be about
fifteen bucks in three years or so for Robin Hood 2 (presumably
in 3D). As if.
The
contempt its screenplay has for the viewer aside, Robin Hood's production
is as impeccable as it is elaborate. From John Mathieson's gorgeous
cinematography to Marc Streitenfeld's rousing score, Ridley Scott's team
never seems to notice that they're laboring on a turkey. Performances
too are rock-solid across the board, albeit lacking much in the way of
depth. Scott's assembled such a first-rate cast they could do this
movie in their sleep, and possibly did.
Robin
Hood began life as Reiff & Voris' much-ballyhooed spec script Nottingham,
which turned the old tale on its ear and made the Sheriff (here seen only
briefly as a simpering buffoon) the hero and the Hood the bad guy.
Bit by bit, it mutated into its final form, a droning and dull fable about
a Robin Hood who's not Robin Hood and how he didn't get King John to sign
the Magna Carta. Universal has marketed their film as the “untold
story” of Robin Hood, as any made-up revisionist take on a man who never
really existed would be inclined to be. At least it kinda looks like
Gladiator, or so I'm told. |
