Robin Hood

If I were to guess, I’d say that Ridley Scott was a chicken korma sort of bloke. He used to be more adventurous – the odd vindaloo, an occasional phal – but these days he sticks with the safe bet korma: mild, runny, smooth. Teaming back up with grunty Russell Crowe, he reincarnates everybody’s favourite Olde English folklore proto-Communist. It’s about time too, because it’s been a little while since an old franchise has been rebranded, reconfigured and resold for the masses to lap up – a darker, gritty, prequel type affair. Batman Begun, Bond bulked up, Super and Spider Men went clothes shopping, now, thank god, Scott has boldly brought back to life a much loved classic, but this time with more sophistication and verve. Enticing. I mean, who would want to risk a fresh idea when we can just keep rehashing old tried and tested formulae?

I’ll be brief, because I feel that, for all its aesthetic splendour and unblemished pacing, acting and pathos, it’s still a cop out. Russell Crowe’s eponymous hero is a cabbage-faced parody of his Gladiator self. Most of his lines he delivers are barely comprehensible, regionally ambiguous, macho whisper-grunts. This isn’t helped by astonishingly poor sound mixing. The plot precedes the steal-from-the-rich, give-to-the-poor Robin we’ve all seen five hundred times before, and delves into how Mr Longstride became not the scampy, socially conscious outlaw befit in green felt tights, but the humourless, brooding, fatherless complex-riddled, mud spattered choade of a man.

The plot is not uninteresting and it is well told, but the whole film is hampered, throughout, by a glaring haze of the utterly unnecessary. The duplicitous, bald, half French, scar-faced bastard, Gofrey, is terrorizing a divided England, bringing with him the imminent wrath of a full-on French invasion. Robin Longstride, under the guise of Sir Loxley of Nottingham, saves the country because he is really good with a bow and arrow and is pretty strong. That’s the gist. Characters are established: Maid Marrion, Friar Tuck, Little John and Co., and they’re all perfectly fine, but none of them, including Hood himself, go beyond two-dimensionality. Cate Blanchett is utterly unstretched as the ballsy Marrion; she’s a spunky, gives-as-good-as-she-gets, empowered woman, but in the end, Scott doesn’t allot her any real agency; she still needs Robin the Man to save her with the snog of life.

Essentially, this is very well made recycled plop. The production design is beautiful and utterly convincing, and to its credit, it isn’t a boring film. The action is kinetic and exciting and I absolutely cannot fault the cinematography, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from the director of Blade Runner. What I would expect is a dose of originality. Obviously, tried and tested franchises are far easier to sell, but that doesn’t mean it should be done, over and over and over. Watch a film like Almodovar’s Talk To Her and you’ll realise how stunningly boring a re-do like Robin Hood 2010 is, and there really is no excuse for remakes anymore. None.

Last edited: 19th September 2010

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