Rockin' Robin: Robin Hood Doubletake

 I’m puzzled by the dearth of positive reviews of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. I held off on reading Owen Gleiberman’s Entertainment Weekly review until after I saw the film, but perhaps his frustration may offer some insight. He complains that the film isn’t fun and that it doesn’t reshoot all of his favorite scenes from other Robin Hood movies. Apparently, O.G.O.G. (because Owen Gleiberman is nothing if not an Original Gangsta) kinda missed the boat on the concept of this particular film, which was to take a different approach to a well-worn character. And in that, it succeeds.

EW's Original Gangsta

But Ogog (as he shall henceforth be known, forsooth) may be agog with good reason. While the marketing for the film does convey that the movie is a revisionist take on Robin Hood, it still promises the audience the adventures of a brave outlaw, which is something you don’t really get (SPOILER) until the last five minutes. No, Oggie, he doesn’t steal from the rich and give to the poor. Instead, Director Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, 976-Evil) strive mightily to make a Robin Hood for grown-ups. They more than half-succeed, trading simplistic good Underdog vs. evil Simon Bar Sinister ideology for a complex web of political intrigue that finds France’s King Phillip as the main antagonist, rather than the prideful and inept King John. While the story’s framework is more mature than the traditional Robin Hood story, this movie is not short on cartoonish caricature.

Robin Longstride starts the film as an archer in the army of King Richard the Lion Heart who, through a fairly ludicrous set of coincidences ends up posing as Sir Robin Loxley, the King’s man-at-arms. One of the film’s faults is that it’s hard to get a bead on Robin’s character. In the space of 3 scenes, he goes from having an “every man for himself” attitude to feeling an obligation to return the dying Loxley’s sword to the man’s estranged father, taking on Loxley’s identity along the way. Through another rather amazing set of happenstances, Loxley’s elderly father takes the man posing as his son to his bosom, and Robin suddenly finds himself a landowner rather than an itinerant vagabond.

It’s a convoluted path to take, rather than just have the actual Loxley return home and take up his father’s cause of trying to get the King to ratify a charter that would guarantee fair taxation. For whatever reason, though, I kind of liked it. Here, Robin Hood fights King John not by bombarding him with Merry Men, but by making an inspiring - if anachronistic - speech about the right to taxation with representation. And while King John is certainly an ass who wants to keep raising taxes, the real villain is the French agent who keeps egging him on in an effort to drive England into civil war so France can invade more easily.

Mark Strong, as Godfrey the French double agent, is at once deliciously and eye-rollingly evil. The brilliant Cate Blanchett is saddled with making Lady Marian into the second coming of Eowyn, the Princess of Rohan from Lord of the Rings in a bit of writing that seems not only anachronistic for the period the film is set in, but almost old-fashioned even by today’s standards. It’s a forced display of feminism that’s pretty distracting and unnecessary. I have nothing against strong women in film, I just doubt she would be very useful in full chainmail with a broadsword. The filmmakers even give her a scene early on where it’s clear how difficult dealing with mail can be. Crowe does fine with what he’s given, but Robin’s character is fairly mercurial. And contrary to what friend Gleiberman would have you believe, there are a few Merry Men, even named as such, in the film, and we do get to see them carousing unabashedly with drink, song, and women.  This is personal bias, but I have to say that casting Kevin Durand (Lost’s Keamy, Wolverine’s Blob (?!)) as Little John is inspired. He got the crazy eye.

It’s a flawed film, to be sure, and I would have preferred that it either go completely cartoony, a la the Costner version (remember when Kevin Costner used to be one of America’s leading actors (?!)), or go whole hog into historical drama. But it takes it’s time, and after the amazingly coincidental set-up, allows its events to unfurl naturally and at their own pace, which I deeply appreciate. I wasn’t blown away, but I was able to take this one on its own terms and appreciate it as a rather workman-like stab at bringing something fresh to an old, old story.

Those title cards, though? They gotta go.

And so the legend begins…

Three out of four Keamys strapped with explosives.