Robin Hood

Rating:	★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Action & Adventure

A Bleating Lion

*spoiler warning*

A good movie always gives the audience an emotion to leave the theater with. However, frustration, anger and ironic mirth are not among the desired ones. Unfortunately, that is all this latest mish mash of the Robin Hood mythos has to offer. Whoever made this boondoggle should fire the research staff, since they were never used as evidenced by the lousy history. Then they should fire the hack writer. After that, they probably should get another director. Or another movie star. Or, hell, just rename this whole stinking turd and repackage it as a movie about a Renaissance Faire. Poorly written, poorly acted and overall, poorly made, this lamb can rise and rise again, but it will never grow a mane and be a lion.

Craftsmanship

Sure, there were some breathtaking shots, but most of them have to do with the subject matter and less with the actual skill of the cinematographer. I would claim that it doesn't take much to make a wide-angle shot of knights in armor riding to battle look dramatic. Awe of the horseman has never left the Western audience.

The whole picture seemed to have been shot with a palette of gray, with the occasional greenish tribute to English hills thrown in for a little variety. Whoever made this movie probably got all of his medieval imagery from Monty Python. I wouldn't be surprised if Blanchett's Marian suddenly pointed out a lovely mound of filth in a corner.

The costumes were standard Renaissance Faire, and making Maid Marian wield a sword sort of highlights the fact that their swords are costume-grade and made of aluminum tinfoil. An authentic broadsword like that would've broken Blanchett's arm if she had tried to swing it around like it were a toy. Best way to allow your audience to suspend disbelief is to not do anything so patently unbelievable by your universe's logic. If Marian had been established as a fembot cyborg, then the Eowyn moment would have been acceptable.

Plot / Story-Telling

As a historian, I am already offended by the blatantly stupid historical pastiche director Ridley Scott attached to this film. In order to satiate his basic instinct for ideological cheap shots (just watch Kingdom of Heaven), he includes an unnecessary and over-long introduction in order to demonize Richard Lionheart and the Third Crusade. Russell Crowe's Robin Longstride*, asked for an honest medieval man's opinion by the Lionheart on the righteousness of his Crusade, unironically delivers the answer of a 21st century liberal hack, complete with Orientalist drivel about the enlightened Muslim.

This massive introductory exposition, which takes up a whole half of a long film (2 hrs 30 mins), does nothing to justify the moving action. If Richard Lionheart was such a heartless asshole, why should I believe that his exchequer managed to raise four years' worth of revenue just to ransom him from the Holy Roman Emperor? And how is King John a worse king than his brother? The massive introduction never fully establishes this, because Scott wanted to demonize Lionheart. On another note, why should I believe that Robin Longstride would fall for such an unwomanly, cold shrew like Blanchett's Marian? Also, how come Marian wants to take back the grain that was freely given to the Church as a tithe offering just because she let the estate's grain get stolen? If you give money to the collection basket, do you storm back and demand a refund from the priest if you get robbed on the way home? This Marian could have stepped onto a bear trap and bled to death, and I wouldn't give a damn about it. This is just poor character development.

Aside from these problem, one gets a sense at the end of the movie that the beginning never really ends in a middle. The movie ends with Oscar Isaac's King John burning the Magna Carta (something that never happened) and denouncing Longstride as an outlaw. This, which should have been the starting point of the film, is placed as the resolution. This renders the entire movie a two and a half hour introduction.

But, one can say that this could be an origin movie. I would retort that even horrible origin movies (Wolverine, for example) have a compact and complete story. Scott's dick move of having King John burn the Magna Carta turned what could have been the ending (and as a bonus, an historical accuracy in a sea of lies) into a prolonging of the absurdly long beginning.

Then, there is character development. I already mentioned the one-dimensional Marian. But almost every character in this movie is a cardboard cutout. A Brechtian production could just put labels on top of each head and the experience would not be altered. King John is a one-note "bad king". King Richard is a one-note "Crusader hypocrite". Godfrey is a one note "bad heavy". Worst of all, Robin Longstride is a one-note "21st century hero medieval stand-in". Anachronism makes for lousy characterization.

Another funny plot moment: where the hell was Godfrey riding to when Longstride hit him with the fatal arrowshot?

Performances

One moment in this film encapsulates the sheer mediocrity of the phoned-in performances for this movie. Crowe's Robin Longstride is preparing to ride away to Dover to meet the French in battle (another bit of historical rape). He looks at Blanchett's Marian, and with a robotic deadpan delivery that would make Keanu Reeves proud, he mumbles "I love you Marian". (Yes, punctuation marks would be a travesty to that delivery.) If young Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher can make "I love you", "I know" into an instant quotable classic, there is simply no excuse for a heavyweight veteran like Crowe. This sort of mediocrity is what you get for two and a half hours. Scott could have saved himself $10 million if he had just gone with Cary Elwes. At least that Robin Hood would have an English accent.

This pedestrian effort ought to tell the movie-going world a lesson: never let Ridley Scott anywhere near anything medieval. He has proven not only incapable of capturing that age and its sentiments on film, but that he also has an utterly debased hatred of anything medieval. In fact, it would be a crime to let Scott attempt to direct historical movies in general. The guy's sense of history, lifted from no later than the last news cycle, interferes with his capacities as a filmmaker and story-teller.

*One more funny observation. Robin Longstride, who never appears in any of the Robin Hood incarnations, is never once called "Robin Hood". The closest is an off-hand remark by some sheriff saying "also known as Robin of the Hood". For a movie called "Robin Hood", you'd think they'd use the name more.

Also, there is no "Longstride" among the Magna Carta's signatories. If ever, "Longstride" seems derivative of the more medieval-sounding "Longshanks" (they mean the same thing), which is the nickname of Braveheart's nemesis King Edward I. So, maybe this can be a prequel to Braveheart?