‘Robin’ Ho-Hum: Taking the Life Out of a Legend
An hour into “Robin Hood,” we still don’t know what it is about.
Then, a bit later, comes a scene to remind us: The French-born would-be queen holds a dagger to her breast to convince England’s King John that his trusted advisor Godfrey is an agent for King Philip of France, who hopes to maneuver the English barons into a civil war in order to leave the English coast unguarded for a French invasion.
That’s all very nice, but wasn’t this movie supposed to be about Robin Hood? His name is on the title, and everything.
Directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe, trying to re-create the success of their “Gladiator,” this new “Robin Hood” is a muddle. It’s a muddle of plot, of character, of story, of motivation and even of history.
For instance, the makers of this film might be surprised to learn that King Richard the Lionhearted died a good hundred years after the movie says he did, “at the turn of the 12th century.”
But what’s a hundred years to a movie that posits that Robin Hood was the inspiration for the Magna Carta, a draft of which was first written by Robin Hood’s curiously literate stonemason father a good 40 years before it was signed? Yes, this is yet another one of those movies about sons reconnecting with the fathers who abandoned them.
It is easy to become caught up in the picture’s historical, logical and even commonsensical entanglements, because there are so many of them. But that would overlook the main problem with the movie, which is: It is a capital-S Snooze.
Every story needs a central conflict. Even Scott, who specializes in flashy visuals at the expense of plot, should know that. But in this film, the many unconnected subplots do not coalesce into a conflict until two hours of the two-hour-and-20-minute running time have elapsed.
Perhaps because some truly great versions of “Robin Hood” have already been told on film (with Erroll Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks in particular), writer Brian Helgeland decided to present an origins story. He wants to explore how Robin Hood came to be Robin Hood.
Some things, it turns out, are best left unexplored.
Played without any inherent interest at all by Crowe, this Robin returns from Richard the Lionhearted’s crusade, takes the identity of the dead Robert Loxley and returns to Loxley’s estate in England. There he meets Loxley’s father (Max von Sydow, who played a returning Crusader himself in the infinitely superior masterpiece “The Seventh Seal”) and his widow, Marion (Cate Blanchett, who is under the mistaken opinion that the filmmakers want the actors to show some personality).
That’s right, here Marion is no maid. For that matter, Robin is no Robin Hood; he does none of the things that we associate with the famous outlaw. He doesn’t even rob from the rich to give to the poor — the closest he gets is stealing from the church to give to the aristocracy. That’s not quite the same thing.
Eventually, the movie comes down to a clash of armies as unknown in the Robin Hood legend as it is in the history books. In the new, magically democratic England at the turn of the 13th century (or “12th”), Robin leads an army against an invading force that has landed on literally the worst possible strategic site in all of England. A six-year-old boy could successfully defend that spot, leaving little doubt to the film’s big climax. We’re in the theater for two hours and 20 minutes, and that’s the best we get?
For much of this movie, the man seated behind me was heard to be gently snoring. That’s a sound that should be common in every screening.
-- Dan Neman, former movie critic for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reviews movies every week here at www.TheBoomerMagazine.com. He also writes the “Silver Screen with Dan Neman” column in each issue of Boomer magazine.
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