Robin Hood (2010)

Seems like any hero worth his salt these days is getting a ‘reboot’ or an ‘origin story,’ a begin-from-before-the-beginning tale that tells us how they came to be who and what they are. We’ve seen it for comic-book heroes (Batman), secret agents (James Bond), and even sci-fi starship crews (namely that of the Enterprise). Now here’s Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood, which offers up an ‘origin story’ for British history’s most famous arrow-slinging bandit. And, indeed, what we have here is closer in tone to Batman Begins or Casino Royale than any given Errol Flynn offering. There’s not much merry about Robin Longstride and his men this go-‘round—this is Robin Hood by way of Braveheart or Scott’s own Gladiator—but there is plenty of epic action, decent acting, and sumptuous design to behold.

Robin Hood wants to tell us the story ‘before Sherwood Forest.’ And before he was a forest-dwelling highwayman, it seems that Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) was a crack archer among the Crusaders of King Richard III (Danny Huston). Richard’s forays into the Holy Land have left him weary, cynical, and broke. He and his army are on the march home, but decide to take a swipe at perennial enemies the French along the way. Bad idea. Richard ends up on the wrong end of a French arrow. This puts his right-hand knight Sir Robert Loxley in the unpleasant situation of having to deliver bad news back to England along with Richard’s crown, and it puts Robin and his fellow soldiers out of a job. Meanwhile, back in England, Richard’s younger brother John (Oscar Isaac) has been ruling somewhat haphazardly, trying to recoup his elder brother’s defense-budget debts between sexual romps with French princesses. But John is not the only one in bed with the French (so to speak). His childhood friend Godfrey (Mark Strong) is a double agent, doing his best to foment unrest in England so that Philip II of France can invade the fractious country with ease. Godfrey and his thugs intercept Loxley on his return trip, but Robin and his friends (also returning) run off the assassins before they get the crown—but not before Sir Robert is mortally wounded. Recognizing Robin as a fellow Crusader, he asks him to deliver his sword back to his estranged father Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow) in Nottingham. And so Robin, assuming Loxley’s upper-class identity to ensure safe passage, returns to England with a dead king’s crown and a dead man’s sword. But will crowning the inexperienced John king be enough to stop the French? And how, exactly, will the Loxleys—Sir Walter and Sir Robert’s widow Marion (Cate Blanchett)—feel about this archer claiming to be a part of the family?

There are many narrative strands to weave together here (did I mention there are questions about Robin’s past?) along with many, many characters. In addition to those already named, there are the usual ‘merry men’: excitable Will Scarlet (Scott Grimes), lute-strumming Alan A’Dayle (Alan Doyle) and towering brawler Little John (Kevin Durand); there’s the mead-distilling Friar Tuck (Mark Addy) and a sleazy Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen); and, back at court, Richard and John’s formidable mother Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins) and her loyal friend Chancellor William Marshall (William Hurt). It’s to the credit of Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland that we largely know what is what and who is who most of the time. The plots and people are juggled effectively if not always thoroughly. I suspect some of Hurt’s part, as well as some of the John-Eleanor stuff, ended up on the cutting-room floor. And it also sometimes feels as if characters like Tuck and the Sheriff are there more because we expect them to be than because the story requires them. Still, a certain amount of complexity is true to the course of British history, if not to our usual summer movie narrative experience, and the actions and motivations of the principal characters remains clear. Scott tends to favor big over small in his productions, and, in a movie of about 2 ½ hours length, it’s probably better to have too many rich supporting characters around the edges than too few.

There’s little to complain about in the acting. Crowe (who is to Ridley Scott what Johnny Depp is to Tim Burton) gives a more layered performance than the movie probably deserves. One of Crowe’s trademarks as an actor is to always hint that there is more to a character than we see, and that serves him well here as a man who is in fact other than he pretends to be (or remembers). This role isn’t new ground for Crowe by any means, but his comfort in it is an asset. Blanchett is likewise on familiar footing as dignified/spunky/coy Marion Loxley, who is neither maid nor shrinking violet in this version (she even dons a suit of armor). There’s less romance between these two than some Robins and Marions, but how quickly do we really want Marion to kiss the man who brought news of her husband’s death? Danny Huston (whose agent has clearly been pulling some overtime lately) is a nice surprise as a burned-out but still somehow regal Richard the Lionheart, and Oscar Isaac, who seems to come from the Jonathan Rhys Myers school of petulant kingship, is equal parts naïve and Machiavellian as slippery King John. As Godfrey, Mark Strong (whose business cards surely have black hats emblazoned on them) adds yet another in his recent long line of arch and gleeful villains. It’s nice to have von Sydow, Atkins, and Hurt along to add some gravitas, even if two of the three feel vastly underused.

Robin Hood is meant to be an epic—Scott’s apparent genre of choice—and, like the same director’s Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, looks every inch of it. There’s much of the current revisionist-accurate gray-stone-and-mud look, but there are also warm firelit rooms, lush forests, green rolling hills, and cliff-ringed beach landings. The landscape is dotted here and there with ruined towers and slowly eroding Roman and Celtic monuments, a nice depth-adding touch that is mercifully exploited less than it could be. The costumes are probably a bit more modern Renaissance Faire than true 12th Century, but everyone looks good enough in them that I didn’t really care. Scott has the chops and the resources to pull of a film of this scale. He especially seems to relish mass battle sequences, and the ones in Robin Hood don’t overstay their welcome. The same can not be said for his now-trademark stop-and-start approach to editing one-on-one combat. It was new and fresh in Gladiator; it’s now starting to feel like its own knock-off.

Much of the unfavorable reaction to this film stems, I’m willing to bet, from the fact that it is not what we think of as the Robin Hood story: jolly lads in a forest making fools of the authorities for a good cause. That’s where this ends, leaving ample room for more adventures of Longstride (as well as Scott, Crowe, Blanchett, et. al.) in the future. I have no problem with the movie wanting to show me new aspects of the Robin Hood character. I have more problems with the movie not really showing me new aspects of filmmaking. This feels like a comfortable outing by a director who knows a genre and actors playing the sorts of roles they know they can play well. Films don’t always have to innovate to succeed, of course, but Scott, Crowe, Blanchett, and Helgeland have all been groundbreakers in various ways in various other projects, and the juicy tale of Robin Hood would seem to be a great opportunity to really go somewhere. I’ll admit, however, that ‘origin’ movies are often a bit unsatisfying, and set up better sequels (X2, The Dark Knight). That may be the case here, as this world and these people are certainly rich enough to revisit. The legend itself teaches us that, in their time in Sherwood Forest, Robin and his men learn a number of new tricks. I hope that if this crowd elects to journey to Sherwood as well, that they learn a few, too.