The reviews written by fanboys online were decidedly mixed. The reviews coming out of the Cannes festival are better. The TImes gives it 4 out of 5.
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Errol Flynn meets the Communist Manifesto in this monumental reinvention of the Robin Hood legend that opens the 63rd Cannes Film Festival tonight.
Initially, some heads were scratched when it was announced that this fifth blockbuster collaboration between Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe (see Gladiator, American Gangster) would open an event renowned for art-house provocations. While simultaneously, in industry circles, the question asked was, ‘Do we really need another Robin Hood movie?’ And yet, on both counts Scott and Crowe have delivered a movie that far surpasses expectations, and might ultimately prove to be more politically provocative than most of the product that unspools over the next 13 days.
The first pleasing shock of the movie is that this Robin, though rooted firmly in turn-of-the-12-century drama, is painfully modern. His concerns are our concerns. Opening shots, for instance, reveal a rural Nottinghamshire landscape overrun with feral children who, like medieval hoodies, wantonly plunder the lands of elderly neighbours. Robin is then introduced to us as a Middle East war veteran, an archer returning from a ten-year military crusade in Palestine, and a man haunted by the slaughter of innocent Muslim women and children (“We became godless that night,†he says, remembering his sins).
More importantly, and this is where the film really catches fire, he is returning to a country profoundly shaken by economic ruin and financial mismanagement. Here the duplicitous Prince John (Oscar Isaac, deliciously reptilian) inherits a bankrupt economy from his departed brother King Richard (Danny Huston, in cowardly lion fright wig, and channelling the spirit of Brian Blessed) and is prepared to drive the country to the brink of civil war through his punishing tax plans.
Thus the radical journey of Crowe’s heroic Robin Longstride will involve reconnecting with his birthright (his father was, apparently, a mason and a socialist political philosopher) and waving into battle not a glinting sword, but a document called the “Charter of Rights†which recognises the right of every ‘man’ to “work and live by the sweat of his own browâ€.
Of course, it’s not all Karl Marx by candlelight, and Scott and Crowe certainly know how to swash and buckle. This is their most satisfying and spectacular outing since Gladiator, and they positively drench the movie in plot. The most significant of these describes Longstride’s journey to the Nottingham estate of a fallen comrade, Robert Loxley (Douglas Hodge), where he meets the widowed Marion (Cate Blanchett) and, encouraged by the ancient baron Walter Loxley (Max Von Sydow), begins to form the outlaw identity of legend.
In all this, Crowe is typically commanding and physically fearsome (he even gets a buffed-up bathing scene), while Blanchett’s Marion is anything but the passive love object. And if the film dies a little towards the end, with a needless double-climax, it hardly matters. For what’s left is the sense of a genuinely probing film made by artists who have more than cheap thrills on their mind. Cannes should be honoured.
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Posted: 10 years 41 weeks ago
The Mail gives it 4 stars as well, and Christopher Tookey (their reviewer hates everything!
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The oldsters hit back. Two of the best movies this year have been by directors in their seventies, namely Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island and Roman Polanski's The Ghost, and here comes a third.
At the grand old age of 72, Sir Ridley Scott makes a triumphant return to form with this magnificent epic.
It's an affectionate nod to one of the world's favourite legends, but it isn't content to be just a roistering romp, along the lines of the classic Errol Flynn picture of 1938.
This is quite a serious Robin Hood, and certainly a good deal more faithful to history than the 1991 version starring Kevin Costner, chiefly memorable for Costner's broad American accent, the most hilariously camp Sheriff of Nottingham ever, in the form of Alan Rickman, and Morgan Freeman's use of a telescope about 200 years before it was invented.
But Scott's grounding of the piece in real events and intelligible human behaviour is never over-solemn, and from beginning to end it's a lot of fun.
There are few classier directors than Scott at creating action movies on a truly epic scale.
Robin Hood may not be quite as spectacular as his best costume epic, Gladiator, but it is a constantly inventive, visually sumptuous production that sets up the legend of Robin Hood with a huge amount of cinematic skill.
This is movie-making on a grand scale, but the more than capable script by Brian Helgeland (LA Confidential) means that it never patronises its audience.
It's a cleverly conceived prequel to the legend, and by the end of its two hours 41 minutes, I was more than happy to sign up to see the sequel.
Russell Crowe - back to his action-man best after what must have been a gruelling diet - is Robin Longstride, a battle-hardened, middle-aged archer with King Richard's Crusaders.
He's an honest man with sympathy for the underdog, and he's returning to England after the death of King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) in the bloody storming of a French castle, which is the first of many action sequences to be extremely well mounted and shot.
Robin and three pals - Little John (Kevin Durand), Will Scarlet (Scott Grimes) and Alan A'Dayle (Alan Doyle) - interrupt a dastardly ambush in northern France of some British knights by a treacherous English noble, Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong) who's in league with the French.
Robin agrees to carry the sword of one knight, Sir Robert Loxley (Douglas Hodge) to his elderly father, Sir Walter (Max von Sydow), who has a castle near Nottingham, effectively run by Sir Robert's attractive but proud and spiky widow Marion (Cate Blanchett).
She has problems with thieving orphans living as outlaws in Sherwood Forest, and unwanted amorous attentions from the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen).
The last thing she wants are romantic complications with a smelly, middle-aged crusader - or does she?
While she's making her mind up about that, the weak and weaselly, newly crowned King John (Oscar Isaac) is insolently defying the advice of his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins) and being misled by the dastardly, two-faced, bilingual Sir Godfrey into sacking his loyal chancellor (William Hurt).
Sir Godfrey believes King John's feckless tax-and-spend policies, oddly prophetic of certain other regimes in Britain's more recent history, will lead to civil war and make England ripe for conquest by the French king (Jonathan Zaccai) who is planning an invasion across the Channel.
Can Robin win fair Marion and unite all right-thinking Englishmen-to repel the foreign foe? Well, what do you think?
We don't get enough moviemaking on this epic scale, and you'd have to go back to The Lord Of The Rings to find this much attention to detail in its design.
The production credits are all faultless, from John Mathieson's handsome cinematography to Marc Streitenfeld's stirring and atmospheric score.
Ridley Scott and his design team under Arthur Max have created a splendidly authentic 13th century England, and the action scenes are as thrillingly shot and edited as anything in Gladiator, Braveheart or Lord Of The Rings.
The script is bright and literate enough to make us care what happens to the characters. The fine cast respond well. Crowe and Blanchett make an entertainingly mismatched couple of people not in the first flush of youth, and wary of anything so predictable as falling in love. Older viewers may well be reminded of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
Mark Addy plays the beekeeping, mead-swilling Friar Tuck as though born, and later fattened, for the role.
Robin Hood ingeniously weaves the true story of Magna Carta into its investigation of one possible source of the legend. Historians will know that it's all tosh, but at least this is entertaining, heart-warming tosh, with a refreshing patriotism and a reasonably sophisticated sense of right and wrong.
This Robin may not care much about the redistribution of wealth, but he does know oppression and injustice when he sees it, and his notion of accountability to the British people would not come amiss in our own age.
This is a cracking good yarn, and you shouldn't miss it. It lifted my spirits in these troubling times, and should do the same for yours.