Robin Hood

Just wow. In a world where Robin Hood is called something else, is not marketed in anyway as a Robin Hood story, and a few of the more random aspects of the film are fixed, this could have been another solid Ridley Scott epic. Sadly none of those things happened, and the movie that I saw is one of the bigger disappointments I’ve seen in recent memory.

Much like Kingdom of Heaven, even when Ridley Scott swings and misses the movies is not a piece of shit. There is plenty to like within Robin Hood. The initial castle siege scenes were phenomenal if pointless in the grand scheme of things. In fact all of the action beats were worthy of anything Ridley has done until the climatic battle that included too many dumbass moments to ignore. Fine I can’t let it go … halfway through the film there is a scene where Robin dons a hood and robs a caravan of grain and it was awesome and that was it. No more Robin Hood the rest of the movie. Lies!

If I could grade a movie literally by looking at the cast, Robin Hood would have been an immediate 10 out of 10. Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong, William Hurt, Max von Sydow, and a quick cameo by Danny Huston are more than I could ever ask for. Everyone takes advantage of the opportunity to mess around in an epic movie. Strong even got to Joker his face up and look even more menacing. The only humor in the film was provided by the merry men, Kevin Durand, Scott Grimes, Alan Doyle, and Mark Addy, who where never named so but they did act merry. I have no beef with the performances; in fact I would agree today to see the second movie in this story just on the strength of the cast.

It’s hard to get across my annoyance with Robin Hood. This was not a bad movie; it was just a complete misrepresentation. Maybe if the word origin or birth was in the title I wouldn’t have felt hoodwinked. But even with that this would have been like Spider-Man ending with Peter Parker getting bitten by the radioactive spider. And since it was a box office failure, I don’t think the wrongs will get to be righted in a future sequel.

7 out of 10