Yeah, yeah. I know. Robin Hood already went down to "Sex and the City" and "Prince of Persia," but I did this and forgot to post it. Some responsible blogger I be. The Gulf will be cleaned up before I get around to ridiculing any more BP executives for their crude comments, har har. Free oil for all. Bring your bucket and scoop as much as you can carry. I see they sucked up a thousand barrels with their latest hat trick. Damn, you got to give those guys credit for trying.
Russell Crowe does a more convincing accent than Kevin Costner, but he still sounds to me, less English than the CEO for a herd of Leprechauns. If Robin Hood gets any older, they’re gonna have to haul him off to Sherwood Forest in a Senior tour bus. Maybe he can swing by Stonehenge on the way.
English history seems fairly well resigned to the idea that Richard Lion Heart was only one of a nominally dedicated and more or less despotically inclined tribe of tyrants strewn across northern France by the careless proclivities of Henry the Second, an inconvenient truth for the fairytale version that put Robin Hood in the forests of Nottingham to resist the depredations of evil King John and his spineless lackey, the Sheriff of Nottingham, anticipating the return of noble Richard from the crusades to put everything right.
The truth more likely seems to be that Richard was no more noble or concerned than any of his immediate friends or relations, if he ever returned to England at all. Beyond this somewhat isolated and perplexing concession to the historical validity of Richard’s probable rottenness, Ridley Scott’s narrative plays just as fast and loose with events as any fairytale, condensing decades following Richard’s crusade into a matter of weeks, and eliminating another inconvenient gap between his return and messy demise from gangrene several years later.
One flagrant irony of the fairytale version is that the occasion for imposition of oppressive taxes by heartless King John was the ransom of Richard from the Austrians, who were royally (so to speak) pissed off after Richard steamrollered a couple of their allies on his way to the crusade. The crusade was largely a PR effort to get past some youthful exuberance that eventually antagonized most of Europe, including his father, although, as the Austrians soon realized, his behavior in the course of the penitentiary expedition left something to be desired also, including the execution of two thousand Muslim prisoners who got to be inconvenient.
In the end, there didn’t seem to be much joy about the prospect of Richard’s return, and why the English bothered to pay the ransom at all is somewhat unclear except that unlike California, at the time it was sort of a national insult to have an Austrian calling the shots. I’m still not sure I want California enough to pay Arnie for it either. Maybe we have moved beyond that mentality, or maybe we should just let the Austrians have California, but nobody in England seemed much inclined to pay for the return of Richard, which explains why they resented John’s taxes, although Richard did repay their generosity later by taking over half of France.
After an opportunistic adolescent crossbowman skewered Richard from the ramparts of a recalcitrant French castle under siege while he was in the middle of an inspection tour, infection finally eliminated the Lion heart a couple of weeks later, and things got back to more normal feudal despotism. The king’s commander of mercenary guards hanged the garrison of the castle, flayed the marksman alive, and the oppressive taxes went back where they usually go, to support oppression.
Ridley Scott, however, dispensed with the whole ransom business and took out Richard in the course of a dramatic charge to the castle gate on his way back from the crusade. What he wanted the castle for wasn’t clear, and I sort of got confused at that point. Robin and his band of Merry Men were under arrest for an excess of merry, and the death of the king gave them an opportunity to split.
Meanwhile, back at Le Ranche, King Phillipe of France plots with Godfrey, another opportunistic royal connection of some sort, against the English Crown and loyal Chancellor Marshall, another throw-ahead to twenty years later, when Pillipe actually intervened in English civil wars until Willikin of the Weald whipped his ass, but those guys are pretty much a whole new operation. From there it gets kind of complicated.
In any case, Phillipe contracts with Godfrey to take down Richard on his way out of Dodge (France), not realizing Richard has already bought the farm. Richard’s outfit, packing the King’s crown as confirmation of the event, shows up on schedule, and Godfrey’s sword slingers ambush them at the passe. From the mortally wounded Robert Locksley, Godfrey learns the news about Richard, but at that point Robin Longstride and his Merry Men on the lambe turn up to wrecke the party. The English archers massacre the French hit-squad and recover the King’s crowne. Godfrey runs for his life, barely escaping back to England with a gash across his face from Robin’s parting shot.
Robin finds Robert Locksley, still dying, and reluctantly promises to carry Robert’s sword back to his father in Nottingham to reconcile their family feud. Robert finally gives up the ghost, and the Merry Men decide the only way to get Richard’s crown back to London without getting hanged for their trouble is for Robin to assume Robert’s identity. I didn’t totally follow that one. Something to do with the crown. Robin manages to ditch the crown with the queen mother, and the now unopposed King John replaces Loyal Chancellor Marshall with the scheming Godfrey to put down the restless barons in the north.
Meanwhile, back at the Manse, Locksley’s wife Marion dodges tax collectors and unsympathetic catholic clergy while Robert gallivants around the world on Richard’s mission of mayhem. The ineffectual (as usual), Sheriff of Nottingham appears briefly. Things look up a bit when the laid-back Friar Tuck takes over the local church gig with a bee-keeping business and mead-brewing on the side, a happy combination. Eventually, Robin comes around with the sword, and Robert’s father wants to go ahead with the scam to help protect the estate. Marion isn’t too keen on shacking up with the impostor, but Robin sleeps on the floor with the dog, so it works out. Probably one of the best scenes in the movie, maybe because it’s so predictable, is Robin instructing the Merry Men to call him Sir Robert. It turns out that Walter Locksley was tight with Robin’s rebellious father back when cantankerous King Henry infringed on everybody’s rights, so Robin is really the heir of the struggle for truth and justice, for whatever that’s worth. I’d rather have the castle.
Are you still with me? Phillipe sends a French posse to help Godfrey stir things up by extracting John’s exorbitant taxes from the barons, hoping they can capitalize on the conflict to invade England. The French posse attacks the Locksley estate, trapping everybody in burning buildings and preparing the usual indignity for Marion. Godfrey executes the valiant Walter Locksley, but Marion proves more problematic, and with the help of the poachers holds off Godfrey and the French until Robin arrives at the last minute, leading the barons‘ cavalry.
King John realizes Godfrey is in cahoots with Phillipe and agrees to lay off the barons. The united English ride to meet the French invasion at the beachy margent of the sea. Marion slips into a comfortable suit of armor and gets in a couple of whacks at Godfrey before Phillipe decides things are going badly and calls off the invasion. John however, burns the agreement with the barons as soon as the threat is over, and Robin, as a rebel baron, is now an outlaw.
Guess where the Senior Center bus is headed? You guessed it, Sherwood Forest. Do you smell a sequel, or does Kevin Costner just take over here?
Phillipe tried to intervene a couple of times in English civil wars. Willikin of the Weald actually defeated the French invasion that turned back from England twenty years later. As a real guerilla leader in the forests of Southern England, Willikin may be a more intriguing character than Robin Hood. Nobody seems to know what degree of reality Robin Hood involves. Maybe that’s the attraction in an age of electronic identity. How authentic does it have to be?
After the casual adaptation of history for the film, I hardly care about the authenticity of a lot of details though. The characters had accents. What kind of accents they had, I could not tell you for sure. They could have been Canadian for all I know. Nobody pulled their arrows with their thumbs as far as I could see. I don’t know how hard it is to climb on a horse in a suit of chain mail, so that didn’t bother me.
The buildings had a kind of Elizabethan Faire quality about them, suitably rustic although somehow sanitized. There was some nice photography of interiors, like Dutch Romanesque (assuming there is such a thing) painting, although I wouldn’t characterize the filming as just gorgeous. I had some doubts about whether the landing craft for the amphibious invasion would have really gotten anywhere propelled by oars with that kind of draft, but on the other hand, what do I know about rowing a boat load of horses over the English Channel in the Middle Ages? I’ll suspend some disbelief in the interests of free enterprise. What the hell? It works for BP and Bank of America.
I wouldn’t call any of the performances brilliant either. Russell Crowe has an artful ability to understate lines, although that sometimes combines with conservative physical motion to create a sense of plodding momentum. In the scenes with Marion, for instance, she reinforces her reactions with indecisive movements. Crowe either transitions predictably from one required state to the next, or remains relatively static. Much of the action depends on inference from effects of the camera, as in the ambush scene with Godfrey's raiders, or later when the French invasion force reaches the shore.
King John is annoying, not because the character has annoying qualities, but because he is played with a kind of mysterious antagonism that never really goes anywhere. Yes, he is something of a self-interested manipulator, but so are we all. Why the apparent insinuation that there is something going on in his head we don’t understand? The French Princess is a promising character, but nominal. My favorite character as usual was the intractable villain, Godfrey, who is evil for no other apparent reason than ambition, which makes him rather one-dimensional, but it is at least a joyful one-dimensionality.
There are enough swords and sieges to give the film a respectable violence quotient, but this isn’t really an adolescent action fantasy. Another thing Crowe can do is look sad and weary. As a middle-aged romance, the characters of Marion and Robin are played for what they could have been, a pair of fatigued survivors with histories in a world of unpredictable loyalties and demands, what to an extent could be characterized in Clint Eastwood, baby-boomer terms as the Castles of Nottingham County. Is it worth a sequel? Ask Clint Eastwood, but maybe what the real target audience wants to see is one more complicated, redemptive romance.
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