When I saw the teaser for Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe as the titular legend, I thought: "Genius." Genius because I'm a sucker for anything medieval, and genius because of the casting of Crowe.
For Crowe adds testosterone to the works, which distances his Robin Hood that much farther from Kevin Costner's in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). Ridley Scott, the director of Robin Hood, went for a grittier feel and he got his money's worth with Crowe, though the finished product comes off as romanced as the 1991 effort. Which is to be blamed, if blame must be assigned, on the castles, dense woods, and damsels in distress – sceneries that are inherently romantic and feel more familiar and less distant than those in Gladiator (2000), a movie also directed by Scott and starring Crowe but set in the Roman Period.
In terms of plot, Robin Hood is a medieval adaptation of Gladiator, which feels right as rain as far as I'm concerned for it's a winning plot. Returning home to England from the Holy Land with a handful of fellow crusaders, Robin Longstride (aka Robin Hood) lucks out and finds himself shelter with the aristocratic Loxleys as the family's patriarch, Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow), has coaxed him to, for practical reasons, pass for the late husband of Marion Loxley (Cate Blanchett) but only to get caught up in high-level chicanery as Prince John (Oscar Isaac) and right-hand man Godfrey (Mark Strong) work themselves out of favour of the English nobility and into the hands of the French.
At the end of the movie we find Robin Hood hiding out in the woods living the utopian life with his Merry Men and Marion after the Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen) has declared him an outlaw.
A sequel wouldn't be entirely out of order, I'd say.
(Running time: 140 minutes)
