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Movie review: Robin Hood
Russell Crowe is Robin Longstride before he became Robin Hood in new epic film from Universal.
By Maggie Scott
It’s not just the legendary man of Sherwood Forest who’s launching target-piercing arrows in Robin Hood, legendary director (Alien) Ridley Scott’s rousing historical action/adventure. Cupid manages to hit the bulls eye to help a solemn archer who’s seen too much of medieval warfare find his heart’s desire, a fight he can believe in and a birthright worth dying for.
Writer Brian Helgeland (Green Zone) gives us a crusade-weary Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) before he became Robin “the Hood,” the outlaw leader of a merry band of disenfranchised and dislocated desperadoes in the last years of the 12th century. Robin’s loyal service to Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) fighting Muslims has been tested by the cruelty and futile excesses he’s witnessed and has given him little beyond prowess with the longbow to take back to England.
Political intrigue assists Robin turning his back on Richard and his final disastrous plunder of a French castle. But, his liberty comes with a price: deliver the sword of a slain knight to the man’s father; the final wish of one Robert Loxley of Nottingham. Before making good on his promise, Robin must also make good on Loxley’s promise to Richard: to deliver the monarchy’s crown to Eleanor (Eileen Atkins), Richard’s mother, upon his death.
Although she knows too well the inferior nature of his character, Eleanor crowns the ambitious head of Richard’s brother, John (Oscar Isaac). With one promise kept, Robin makes his way to Nottingham, where he’s taken in by Robert’s father, Sir Walter (Max Von Sydow) and convinced to continue the assumed identity. While Sir Loxley soon takes a shine to Robin, it’s a different matter for Marian (Cate Blanchett), Robert’s widow.
Although it’s been ten long years since anything but dogs have shared her bedroom, she’s not about to let Robin get any ideas. Although amused at the situation, Robin soon discovers how dire things are for the citizens of Nottingham: shortages of food and men to work the fields—and, now, an onerous decree from the king that his subjects must increase their “fair share” of the money and grain needed to support the monarchy and its armies.
Although Eleanor and others, such as William Marshal (William Hurt), plead the case of the suffering people, it falls on deaf ears. John appears to be blind, as well, when he fails to see that his friend, Godfrey (Mark Strong), who is only English “when it suits him,” has decided his road to power is to assist France’s King Philip in an invasion of England. Because John hasn’t figured out how to bring unity to a country still struggling with Norman versus Saxon rivalry, Philip believes he could “take London with an army of cooks.”
But, that’s before Marshal convinces the barons to convene a council to plan their defense of England. Nor before Nottingham is brutally attacked by Godfrey; and before Robin learns that he had a father who died at the hands of tyrants determined never to see his dream—that high and low born alike be united through “liberty by law”—become reality. With barons and archers at his side, Robin faces Godfrey and the French and “takes his place in history.”
Although not as stirring as Crowe’s work for Ridley Scott in Gladiator, there is still much to get the heart pounding—not least of which the way in which Crowe speaks the words, “Ask me nicely,” to a defiant Marian on the first night she must reluctantly (for the servants’ sake) request that Robin join her in her bedchambers. Tally ho! A Universal Pictures release, rated PG-13 for violence.
