Robin Hood

The thing you have to know when your watching Robin Hood is that your not just watching a remake of a classic favorite, but your also watching a Ridley Scott movie. And I happen to be one of Scott's biggest movie fan, hence I will try my best to be as unbiased in my review as I could. Ridley Scott's movies are always bursting with details and details and details, the production values of any of Scott's movies are always immaculate and no expenses are evidently spared. From the historical characters to the last piece of thread found in the costumes, watching a Ridley Scott period production is like attending a crash course in history lesson.

Ridley Scott burst into Hollywood with a successive string of classic movies such as Alien, Bladerunner and Thelma & Louise. But he quickly descended into the 'style over substance' curse with flops like White Squall and G.I. Jane. However, he found new life in year 2000 when he won a deserving Oscar for Gladiator, but at the expense of us getting stuck with Russel Crowe. Maybe Scott wanted a more rugged battle hardened Robin Hood, but could he at least settle for someone younger?

So we all know the story of Robin Hood, the master archer who robs the rich and gives to the poor. How is Scott able refresh a seasoned plot story is something that needs to be seen to be believed. Like the old saying, if it isn't broken don't change it. Scott tried dabbling his strokes to give a fresh take on Robin Hood, but personally I feel he ended up with an incoherent storyline that could neither satisfy the old school audience nor win over the new. There is simply too much subplots involving too many characters that dredged the attention and focus of an audience already robbed with the ingenuity a familiar story. The political inclination of the French invasion was thrown into the background to make way for Robin and Lady Marion's romance. And seeing Crowe and Cate Blanchette (who plays lady Marion) flirting onscreen just seems wrong to me.

Robin Hood is decidedly one of Scott's least action packed, action period movie because of the development of an overly contrived story. But the fact the story still made sense in the end shows how much credit has to go to the editing team. One of Scott's biggest flaw in most of his movies are the villains are, well simply put, plain evil. Here the villain Godfrey, (played by Mark Strong, who seems to be making a career playing villains) is just a one dimensional bad guy without any moral ambiguity. That make's it an easier job for Scott to put Crowe's Robin Hood in favorable light with little effort, which without a doubt lost the good versus evil dynamics that was so well played between Crowe's Maximus and Joaqiun Pheonix's Emperor Commodus in Gladiator. Crowe did well to play out the character of Robin Hood, but added nothing new to a character we saw acted by so many predecessors in similar fashion.

But being a Ridley Scott's production, one is guaranteed of sweeping and breath taking cinematography that is signature of the veteran director. The CGI is merged seamlessly with the actual scenery to give us a sense that we are actually in medieval England. However there is too little engagement in the development of the character and story of Robin Hood to offer any fresh outtake that is supposed to be offered in an origins story. So far the best origins story I've seen still goes to Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. Robin Hood is at best still a modern take of the swash buckling hero who does nothing much than repeat the formula of kill the bad guys and save the damsel in distress. I can only hope and pray that Scott's next project which is the prequel to his own 1979 mega classic hit Alien will render much better results.