The latest version of the Robin Hood folklore story has been met by mostly poor reviews from critics. One of my film fan Twitter followers has claimed it has prompted her first ever cinema walk-out. The Telegraph reported on the 26th November that it is 2018’s largest box office bomb – the biggest flop, in fact, since Guy Ritchie’s similarly maligned King Arthur.
The comparisons to Ritchie’s movie are also relevant because Robin Hood takes a similar stylistic approach – CGI heavy, grungy, and a clear attempt to make the iconic hero ‘cool’ again. At times, the design approaches the steampunk aesthetic – as characters wear anachronistic clothing and work in what appear to be industrial revolution era factories. Nottingham itself is rendered as a sprawling, industrial metropolis, with high rise buildings, slums, and narrow streets.
It is this approach that struggles to convince, and stops the film succeeding. English medieval countryside and towns do not have to be enhanced and made modern to look fantastic on screen. In doing so, the film only sabotages its setting, one of its main potential selling points. The look is dark and artificial with little deviation in the brown and charcoal colour scheme – sometimes striking, but mostly preventing us from enjoying one of the exciting elements of the original story (stories) – its medieval locale. Similarly, there is nothing wrong with costumes that reflect the period, rather than the standard and predictable Nazi-esque clobber of the Sheriff of Nottingham and his soldiers.
Ironically, the most obvious attempt at modernisation also results in the film’s most effective scene. Robin is drafted to fight in one of the crusades, and Bathurst recreates a War on Terror style troops under fire action sequence, clearly reminiscent of news footage and documentaries following soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here, for the only time in the film, the action is hard and spectacular, and effectively defines the character traits of three of the central figures in the story. It is the definite highlight. But the overall seriousness of it all undermines the other attractive element of the Robin Hood story – the tone of ‘derring do’. This tone is almost entirely missing.
The cast however, is terrific. Taron Egerton, Jamie Foxx, Ben Mendelsohn, and Paul Anderson, are usually superb performers when working with the right material, and they struggle manfully with what they are given here. The film tries hard to be fun, politically relevant, and up to date – but doesn’t succeed in any of these endeavours. The best cinematic Robin Hood remains the 1938 version starring Errol Flynn, and the Robin of Sherwood 1980s TV series starring Michael Praed could possibly the strongest and most interesting version of them all.
James Edward Newton 