Being green is not easy
ROBIN HOOD
Cert. 12A
Director Ridley Scott teams up for the fifth time with his Gladiator star, Russell Crowe, in this engrossing and action-packed telling of how the legend of Robin Hood may have come to be.
Robin is presented as a less deliberately likeable fellow than in some past cinematic outings, but Crowe’s careful performance gives him a definite warmth. This also applies for most of the familiar characters, apart from Friar Tuck, who has been cast and portrayed in the most obvious and staggeringly unimaginative way possible. Cate Blanchett shines out, though, in a noble and quietly spirited take on Lady Marian.
The film’s huge budget has been very well spent, with its recreation of late 12th-century England incredibly rich and de-tailed. One of Robin Hood’s most obvious strengths is this deeply immersive sheen, as if 21st-century cameras had been sent back in time to expertly record these legendary events.
The film starts out as quite dark and sincere, and it comes as a pleasant surprise how naturally some of the more traditional elements of Robin Hood folklore are included. For example, when challenged as to whether certain men should join their mutinous group, Robin argues, ‘The more the merrier’.
Hood’s parentage is given something of a shallow exploration, setting him up as a future hero and giving the King of England motivation enough to hate him. If no sequel is made, then it will be hard to see what the point of this film was in a narrative sense, filled as it is with many a cheerworthy moment of swashbuckling glory, in the end Robin of the Hood’s achievements seem a bit evanescent.
The convoluted storytelling serves to make things as believable as possible, by which I mean a bit too dull, and the film struggles to maintain its energy on most occasions when Scott is not delivering another of his stunningly accomplished depictions of historical warfare. But Crowe, along with a host of veteran character actors, including the great Max von Sydow, manages to pull us through these necessary scenes of exposition with his understated charisma, and more than half decent Yorkshire accent.
A more serious version of Robin Hood then, with its gritty depiction of country life and political edge, but nicely balanced by the thrillingly filmed battles and beautiful photography of the rolling English countryside.
Peter D. Marsay,
filmmaker/writer
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