Just Watched: Robin Hood

Just Watched: Robin Hood

Do not be fooled.  This film is not about Robin Hood.  It has borrowed a few names and the setting but other than that it's a much different story.

I don't mind people reinventing a classic but it's not usually a good plan to start out by eviscerating the beast and then hanging a plot into the limp carcass.  I was not a big fan of Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur but at least that reinvention went whole-hog and changed everything.

In this version we have Robin (who is not actually Robin),  returning to England and dishing out social justice, not in the classic mode of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor but rather by championing a Magna Carta like document his father had written.   I'll admit this Robin's actions are more morally grounded but that's not the ticket I bought when I sat down to see this film and it certainly doesn't make for an improved story.

However, it wasn't until the climatic battle at the end of the film that I really made up my mind that I hated this film.   The final straw was a disguised Marion leading a rag-tag band of forest urchins into battle, in a scene that seemed directly plucked from LoTR, and Robin saving her in the crashing surf  (in what would have appeared to all observers in the battle as a homo-erotic encounter).    It was silly.

Not a good movie.




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