If you can wait for it, while wading through a pokey, ponderous (Sherwood) forest of stiff-jointed backstory and solemn setup, you will, after more than two hours, arrive at a flash of satisfaction in the final five minutes of "Robin Hood." That brief concluding bit, in which Robin and his Merry Men — Little John, Friar Tuck and Maid Marion, too — have elected a life outside the king's law, wraps with the title card: "And so the legend begins." Fade out.
If only the legend began an hour earlier. As directed by Ridley Scott, whose post-"Gladiator" jones for epic populist spectacle has befogged his sizable talents, "Robin Hood" is a mediocre movie that could have been a pretty good movie. A nip, a tuck, less gab, more action — it's simple, really.
"Robin Hood" is rarely exciting, not the galloping adventure you seek in summer fare. Undistinguished and too knotted in political intrigue, dead-father issues and the like, I'm afraid this version will bore the tights off the younger-than-13 crowd seeking a new hero. They will have to wait for the inevitable sequel after this draggy origin story, which explains, slowly, the motivations behind Robin Longstride, who's soon to become a hood.
Scott and writer Brian Helgeland, who provides an accomplished but drearily conventional script, take the medieval Robin Hood folklore seriously. It's a genre tale for grown-ups, and normally I appreciate that, be it "Gladiator" or "The Dark Knight." But too much is lavished on the backstory of Marion (Cate Blanchett, silky pluck and poise), including her late husband and noble, doddering father-in-law (Max von Sydow).
Russell Crowe's Robin, a "common archer" in King Richard the Lionheart's army, which has just returned from the ruinous Third Crusade, represents stolid dignity and implacable integrity. He's Maximus in jingling chain mail, as brawny and about as humorless.
Crowe's a somber actor and always looks burdened by a seriousness of purpose. (All that willed dignity is heavy cargo.) He is the strong, silent type, here reduced to a stony mumble. He maintains a crinkled brow, one of which cocks with cautious mirth on occasion.
It's a complicated time in 12th-century England. The king has been killed in battle and his younger brother John, a snot, is only too happy to wear the crown and push around his countrymen. The nation, after follies such as the Crusades, is broke. John charges a duplicitous mercenary named Godfrey (the bald, pinched Mark Strong, who played the reptilian heavy in "Kick-Ass" and "Sherlock Holmes") to collect taxes and goods from the people with scorched-earth delicacy. Even the chalices of the church are looted. All of this unravels as France poises to attack a weakened England.
Scott and company establish a filthy old-timey ambience. Mists lace the preternaturally verdant countryside and dirt and straw matt the villages, which are smogged with smoke from utility fires. Clomping hooves, battle cries and the whish of arrows lay the soundtrack.
Woven into this big story, yet often obscured, is a character study. Robin's anti-authoritarian streak is fed by a self-interested individualism that Ayn Rand might have hailed. He's a lover, pal and patriot, but he's a loner at heart, the guy who sits outside the fireside chat for Emersonian contemplation.
He fights for a righteous nationalism and will turn on king and church in the service of liberty (unintentional whiffs of fed-up homegrown American terrorists). King John burns the Magna Carta, the final blow that turns Robin and his band into outlaw exiles in Sherwood Forest, where, we presume, they will rob from the rich and all that.
This is where "Robin Hood," ordinary and ultimately corny, ends. Really, of course, it's where it begins.
"Robin Hood"
Our grade: C
Genres: Adventure, Historical Drama, Action
Running Time: 140 minutes
MPAA rating: PG-13
Release Date: May 14, 2010
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