Film Number 23 – Robin Hood
Ridley Scott’s 237 million dollar epic finally landed last week to unfavorable reviews and box office shillings. Seems as if America has cured itself of its post 9/11 need for superheros to save us and are looking for a lone figure to steal form the rich and give to the poor, the perfect remedy for the recent credit crunch. Scott in full reboot mode takes the unconfirmed legend back to his unconfirmed roots for an unconfirmed story, could I call this Robin Hood? No one can, he’s myth, he’s folklore, the popular notion of his appearance would be Errol Flynn’s portrayal or for the 80’s and 90’s generation there is the classic Disney Version, I hope that when someone thinks of this legend, Kevin Costner’s visage doesn’t come to mind. I haven’t actually seen Prince of Thieves because I’m scared of having my passport revoked but from all the comments I can only think the worst happened, that Robin sold out and went to Hollywood, got bored of the mandolin and felt like having his action serenaded by power ballads and face melting guitar solos. The truth is that my first interaction with Robin Hood came in the form of the BBC educational children’s show Maid Marion and Her Merry Men, which featured Marion as the leader of the merry men that included the first medieval Rastafarian to be shown on screen, if you think I am joking about this watch this clip.
Yes the 90’s were a great time for television.
After Thieves, Kevin Costner and The legend of Robin Hood went away, everyone got their medieval fix from King Arthur and the Lord of the Rings. This project had been in development for a couple of years, originally called Nottingham, Scott and his merry men came in reworked the film changing a lot of elements and plots point to give us this raw, ruthless reboot. Scott begins the film telling us that this story will concern how Robin became an outlaw, he’s been away for ten years in the Middle East on the crusades, yes you’ve just read that Robin Hood on the Crusades.
To recite the plot would be both pointless and dull to read, it moves well and is as logical as you would expect. There are the horrible blockbuster moments – we’ll get to that later- but the film is carried on the shoulders by Russell Crowe in the title role. The accent isn’t as terrible as popular speculation, it at least jumps from region to region. Crowe does his best with the character, not quite his one from Gladiator but it does come close, he angry when he needs to be and angry when he could be. He has moments of the charisma we expect from Robin Hood, most of these require interaction from his merry men though.
Onto the Merry Men, they're all great and underused, we never get much time to really get a sense of each character, just that there is the strong one, the dopey one, the musical one and so on. All the other actors do their best with what they have been given; it’s just pretty cool that Max Von Sydow is in the damn film. Cate Blanchet is fine as Maid Marion but the character is poorly written; she loves her husband and is miserable when the news of his death comes, yet later on in the film we find out that they only knew each other for a week before he went to battle? The moment that really fucks up this character for me is in the final battle scene when Maid Marion dressed in full armor heroically comes down the hills, joined by Friar Tuck and a brigade of small feral wilderness children, to fight in a full on battle with France’s top soldiers. The sad thing is that for all of her braveness, Marion falls off the horse very quickly into the water, where she finds out that the armor is too heavy for her to stand and begins to drown. Now this moment really undermines this epic battle scene because Marion’s inclusion is solely so that she can be saved by Robin so that he can find Sir Godfrey, terrible writing. Now I am all for equality but not when I’am watching a fucking period piece, what was the point in spending millions of dollars to recreate sets and costumes, all to aid the viewer into believing this time period, only to fuck it all by sending Marion into battle? Also showing her pathetically drowning from her own careless mistakes is not that empowering. She is not Joan of Arc and we are not fucking stupid, although as I write this the top grossing film in America is Shrek 4, so maybe that statement isn’t quite valid.
The sad thing about this film was how it was advertised; the trailer had almost none of the humor that is present, it was all just a bloodbath of action. It does a good job to display all the awesome action but it does not help sell the films tone, people going in expecting the next Gladiator will be disappointed in finding that the tone was in fact quite light hearted at times and the people that enjoy this light hearted tone won’t go and see it because of the trailer. You would think for all those advertising dollars that someone would’ve actually watched the film? The trailer that went out was quite soulless and unappealing made the film look like a two and a half hour snooze.
Bad things aside, there is actually some great stuff in this film. The action scenes are flawless and breathtaking, no bullshit shakycam stuff, it’s full on violence and choreographed impeccably. Some incredible sweeping helicopter shots seeing hundreds of soldiers going into battle; Scott really knows how to film this stuff. Unfortunately the biggest problem with the film is that for all its strengths it really isn’t the story of Robin Hood, it’s an origin story about the man who robs from the rich to give to the poor. After all of these giant battle scenes what is teased at following in the next film just doesn’t seem very thrilling at all. Also looking at the numbers I don’t see a sequel being given the green light any time soon.
So there you have it, another version of Robin Hood missing the point and getting ahead of itself, someone thought this film would start a giant franchise, it’s a decent thought and I was amazed at actually how entertaining the film was; I never found myself bored but I never felt like I was watching Robin Hood either.
6 out of 10
0 comments:
Post a Comment