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ROBIN HOOD
Starring: Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn
Director: Otto Bathurst
Genre: Action/Adventure
Rating: PG-13
RUNTIME: 116 Mins
The saga of Robin Hood, the British nobleman who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor, is now so iconic and so familiar that any filmmaker who wants to spend exorbitant amounts of money to tell it again had better at least try to contribute something new to the character’s legacy.
Otto Bathurst’s new rendition, starring Taron Egerton as the title character, appears to have taken that challenge and thrown it to the ground and stepped on it a few times, just in case. This new Robin Hood evokes a few modern storytelling styles, and has a charismatic new cast, but offers no interesting perspective on the character or his adventures. It may very well be the first Robin Hood movie without an actual point.
“Listen,” the narrator tells us at the beginning. “Forget history. Forget what you’ve seen before. Forget what you know.” The narrator even claims that he can’t tell you what year it was, because he simply can’t remember. It’s as though we’re being told this story by a high school dropout who’s filtering it all through every superhero film he can remember.
Robin of Loxley has a pretty good life. He’s rich, he’s powerful, he’s reasonably beneficent, and he’s in a long-term relationship with Marian (Eve Hewson). But his life falls apart when he’s conscripted into The Crusades, a military conflict half a world away, which was one of the most brutal conflicts in world history, but which – for the purposes of Robin Hood – mostly exists to inconvenience him.
“The sooner we win this war,” Robin’s captain shouts, “the sooner Loxley gets what he wants most: back to his sweetheart!” That’s a weird thing to tell a whole platoon of soldiers. If they didn’t all seem to like Robin, we’d probably assume their leader was trying to get Robin knifed in the back. But instead they embark on a deadly campaign in the Middle East, walking into a bombed-out city with longbows drawn, as if that never puts a strain on your arms.
The Crusade sequence in Robin Hood is probably the film’s most interesting part, because Bathurst is so eager to draw parallels between the Middle Ages and the present that reality falls apart, and the enemy winds up firing giant crossbow gatling guns. It’s fair to say that that’s probably not how it actually happened, but at least it’s something we’ve never seen before.
Robin winds up nearly getting killed by Yahya (Jamie Foxx), but then earns Yahya’s respect when Robin tries – and fails – to save Yahya’s son from being executed by Robin’s own men. Robin is sent back home in shame, and Yahya isn’t far behind and assumes the name ‘John.’
Suddenly the whole reason for the Crusades subplot becomes apparent: so the film can work a way to have a black Little John. Welcome to 2018.
Anyway, when Robin returns to England, things have changed. He was declared legally dead two years ago, his house is in shambles, and Marian has remarried to young union organiser and political up-and-comer Will Tillman, who’s not called ‘Will Scarlet’ yet, for reasons.
The Sheriff of Nottingham (Ben Mendelsohn) is bleeding the populace dry with his insane taxes, so Robin and Yahya embark on a vigilante campaign to steal all the stolen money and give it to Marian. Then Marian tells Robin that that’s a stupid idea and that he should give it to the poor instead, so that’s what he does.
The film then proceeds to dip into all the big Robin Hood bullet points, with small heists, big heists, Robin pretending to be a cad but actually being a hero, Marian getting kidnapped, you know this drill. The film has a decent eye for action – except for Robin’s seemingly indestructible horses, and metal suits of armour that are somehow immune to heat – but none of the chase scenes or fights have clever ideas behind them, so they offer us nothing that other, better Robin Hood movies haven’t shown us before.
The design philosophy of this iteration is almost impossible to make out. It’s tempting to say that it takes place in a grand fusion of the modern and the medieval, since Mendelsohn’s wardrobe seems to consist of designer suits, but there’s no consistency to the costumes or the production design. So instead it comes across as haphazard and confused.
The only thing saving it from utter pointlessness is the cast, all of whom make the most out of very little. Taron Egerton, one of my favourite actors thanks to the Kingsman movies, has a natural charm, and shifts comfortably between rakish heroism and eyebrow-raising smugness. Mendelsohn adds more depth to his Sheriff of Nottingham than the movie arguably requires, so that when he reveals his history of childhood abuse you genuinely start to feel bad for him, and kind of wish he was the protagonist.
Everyone in Robin Hood would have been perfectly cast in any other Robin Hood, but this is what we got instead. It’s a conventional re-tread with slightly different window-dressing, and a disappointing sequel tease that plays more like the season finale of a swiftly cancelled TV show than the set-up for an exciting, blockbuster series.
As long as there is economic disparity, the story of Robin Hood will always be relevant. But you wouldn’t know it by watching this movie. It’s a straightforward retelling with a confusing design philosophy, disappointing action sequences, weak storytelling and a cast which clearly deserved better material.
Now showing in: Cineco, Seef II, Saar, Avenues, Mukta A2, Wadi Al Sail, Oasis Mall Juffair
Kristian’s verdict: 2/5
