Robin Hood

I rented Robin Hood last night with a little trepidation.  Whilst I though Gladiator was fantastic, I had seen mixed reviews of this Ridley Scott / Russell Crowe pairing.

This film takes a grittier approach to the Robin Hood legend than some previous ones and certainly has some epic scenes but overall it just failed to capture either the magic or charm of some of the previous outings.

The story concentrates on Robin before he becomes an outlaw, starting with him as an archer in King Richard's army returning from the Crusades.  The initial castle siege is reasonably well done but with some unnecessarily OTT elements (and the start of the fiddling with history - although this has come to be expected in this sort of film).  Crowe goes on to reprise his Marcus Aurelius role (although with less depth).  It moves through some entertaining story development and battles scenes to the climactic battle which was rather a disappointment in my view and then to a rather rushed ending.

It's not difficult to identify some of the main failings of the film:

• Russell Crowe's accent - whilst this settles down a little later in the movie he can't seem to make up his mind which accent he is doing
• The landing craft (knight) - I don't dispute that there were landing ships in medieval times but the design of these just jars too badly
• Maid Marion as Joan of Arc - unnecessary and implausible
• King John - lacked the appropriate depth and complexity

As you can probably tell this movie was a bit of a disappointment for me and given the material and budget I felt more could have been made from it.