Robin Hood

Robin Hood

Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott again. A thousand years later the same stocky everyman is fighting in mud rather than sand, and has swapped being father to a murdered son and husband to a murdered wife to become Robin Longstride, archer in Richard the Lionheart’s crusading army. The army is poor and sacking its way back home to England one castle at a time, but a set of coincidences leave the king dead and Robin and some mates disguising themselves as knights to secure passage home with the king’s crown. Robin pretends to be Sir Loxley of Nottingham whose blind dad takes him in, and he swiftly turns that tax-starved village around with a mixture of hard graft and banditry. Meanwhile, Mark Strong is Godfrey and plots to oust the new king, brother of the late Richard, and have King Philip of France take England. Robin unites the northern barons who have been attacked by Godfrey’s French forces posing as the king’s men, and averts civil war, heading off with a newly united force to fight the French on the beaches. It’s at this point that Cate Blanchett’s Maid Marian (widow of the late Sir Loxley and newly sharing her home and bed with Robin) arrives, leading the wild boys of Nottingham forest in a charge on ponies and you go “Durrrr…”.
Anyway, there’s action, jokes, tomfoolery and evil sneers. One dimensional French baddies feature alongside a great cast with Max Von Sydow, William Hurt, Danny Huston and particularly Blanchett as stand outs, with Blanchett in a decent female role absent from Gladiator, brave and resourceful but not too modern to be totally out of step with 11th Century England. If only Russell’s accent were as reliable, but to be fair it does keep to the North of England even if it does sometimes wander coast to coast.
Robin Hood is unlikely to end up in many top ten lists but it’s a reliably entertaining offering nevertheless.