![]() John, the arrogant, insecure and youngest of Eleanor’s sons and now the new king, dismisses the longtime royal adviser William Marshall (William Hurt) and is persuaded by the venal Godfrey to soak the already strapped northern barons for everything they’re worth Godfrey takes it upon himself to eliminate Marshall and Robin, especially after the latter bestows him with an unsightly scar that extends his mouth by a couple of inches Eleanor loathes the French tart Isabella (Lea Seydoux) who will become John’s queen, and Robin, his memory gradually reawakened to a convulsive childhood trauma, realizes who was responsible for depriving him of his father. What Sir Robert failed to mention, however, was that he also had a wife, a feisty lass named Marion (not a Maid this time, thank you very much) who has spent the decade tolerating local louts while tending to her blind, dear and very old dad-in-law, Sir Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow).Īs written by Brian Helgeland from a story cooked up by him and the “Kung Fu Panda” team of Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris, the film’s first 45 minutes and much thereafter are narrowly devoted to establishing myriad deadly oppositions this is a world with no shortage of vendettas, grudges and plain old hatreds. The spectacle of Robin’s boat proceeding up the Thames estuary on its way to the Tower of London, accompanied by an increasing number of escorts, makes for a fresh and impressive sequence, the pageantry leavened by the fact that Robin is an imposter, masquerading as Sir Robert Loxley, a former-comrade-in-arms whose dying wish was that Robin return his sword to his father in Nottingham. At stake, literally if not officially, is the English crown, which Robin scoops up and stealthily spirits across the Channel to return it to Richard’s beleaguered mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Eileen Atkins). ![]() With the troops in disarray, a few of the king’s best archers, including Crowe’s Robin Longstride, witness a forest ambush led by Godfrey (Mark Strong, as if portraying a direct ancestor of his perfidious gangster in “Kick-Ass”). Having materialized at the very end of “Kingdom of Heaven,” Richard (a grandly shaggy Danny Huston) lays successful seige to a French castle on his way back to England for the first time in a decade, only to be killed by a (historically correct) arrow through the neck. With opening titles incorrectly stating that the action commences at the beginning of the 12th century when, in fact, King Richard died in 1199, on the eve of the 13th, the film shows English soldiers in the final stages of retreat from the Third Crusade. In the context of the film’s launch as the opening night attraction at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, it’s amusing that the yarn’s greatest villains are the French, under King Philip II to counter them, the assorted warring English factions are compelled to unite, a theme with contemporary resonance of its own in the wake of the recent fractious election in the U.K. 'Atlanta' Just Dropped Its Funniest Episode in YearsĬharlotte Gainsbourg Thought Lars von Trier Would Fire Her from 'Melancholia'Ī-Listers Enter the Best Director Race with the Advantageģ5 Disturbing Foreign Films to Watch, from Gaspar Noé to Takashi Miike After several pictures dedicated to documenting his increasing girth, it’s reassuring to see Russell Crowe back in fighting form, but the villains here chart new territory in one-dimensionality, the essential storyline is bereft of surprise and the picture ends where most Robin Hood tales–sensibly, as it turns out–begin. Earthy, rugged and earnestly advanced in quasi-plausible historical terms, this grandly produced picture can be regarded as something of a tangential sequel to Scott’s ambitious “Kingdom of Heaven,” with Richard the Lionheart as the connective thread. A conjectural “origins” story about the career birth of England’s legendary people’s outlaw, Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood” is neither as good as the director’s personal best period epic, “Gladiator,” nor a match for Hollywood’s most memorable previous accounts of the beneficent bandit of Sherwood Forest (it is, however, superior to the Kevin Costner entry two decades back, which I at the time dubbed “Robin of Wood”).
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