Every generationgets its Robin Hood redux. In the newest movie based on the legend, RussellCrowe steps inside the boots once filled by Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn,Sean Connery and Kevin Costner. A screenplay with a multitasking agendaoverwhelms Crowe’s sensitive performance, depicting a just and spiritual man aswell as a skilled archer. The new RobinHood is an “origin story” in Hollywoodlingo, and the hero never gets around to robbing the rich. In a theme the GOPmust love, he actually saves the rich from tax collectors when he isn’tfighting off an invasion by those hated, freedom-fry-loving Frenchmen. In hisspare time he becomes a constitutional reformer, trying to impose the MagnaCarta, the ancestor of our Bill of Rights, on a reluctant monarch.
The rather dourproject by director Ridley Scott (Gladiator)is neither as fun as it should be nor as deep as it wants to be. History isrearranged to suit the hopscotch story. Good ideas were probably muddled on thejourney from the green light to the multiplex. Robin is established early on asa teller of truth to power. While returning from the Crusades, the Englishking, Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston), asks bold Robin for his opinion oftheir adventure in foreign parts. “God will not be pleased,” Robin says of theslaughter committed in religion’s name.
The vaingloriousRichard, felled not by a Saracen blade but a French arrow, proves to be abetter man than his successor, the decadent, tax-and-spend wastrel named John(Oscar Isaac). The new king dispatches an army to squeeze the last pence fromthe pockets of the noblemen, a plundering expedition led by the brutal,shaven-headed Godfrey (Mark Strong), a traitor scheming to deliver the Englishcrown into the hands of the king of France. It’s a busy story and notespecially well arranged.
The film has somegood touches. The best moments from the many siege scenes capture the clank andsnap, the rattle and groan of medieval warfare. The brutal squalor of northern Europe in those days is vividly depicted. The script hasits eloquent moments scattered among the cumbersome plot. The cast is entirelycapable, but anyone expecting the merry panache of old (of olde?) will bedisappointed.
Familiar charactersfrom the Robin Hood legend make appearances. As always, Little John (Kevin Durand)is a big man; Friar Tuck (Mark Addy) is rotund and full of mead. Othercharacters are transformed. Lady Marion (Cate Blanchett) is no wallflower thistime, but instead an independent woman who can run a feudal estate and fightwith bow and sword. The usual bad guy, the Sheriff of Nottingham, is asniveling bungler with little screen time.
