• “Robin Hood,” Directed by Ridley Scott, Universal Pictures, Released May 14, 140 minutes.
“What has 18 legs and is going nowhere?” asks Robin, just before his merry men set upon the cargo wagon. The joking prince of thieves is true to form, but this isn’t everyone’s favorite outlaw stealing from the rich to give to the poor — Robin is a feudal lord, concerned most with providing for the destitute inhabitants of his village. His merry men follow faithfully, not to the hunt, but to battle against a tyrant king and a French invader.
In this unusual prequel to the classic legend, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe present a tale of trust blighted and held, words given and broken, with a surprising dissertation on the social contract and the nature of authority — and manage to have a legendarily good time doing it.
Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) is an expert archer and troublemaker in King Richard the Lionheart’s Crusading army, besieging the small castle of Chalus in France. When the king is killed by a chance crossbow shot, the royal crown is sent off with Sir Robert Loxley of Nottingham to crown the king’s brother John before word of the king’s death spreads.
The courier is ambushed by a renegade English knight, Godfrey (Mark Strong), but Robin and his men interrupt the ambush and manage to drive off the mercenaries. With his dying words, Loxley asks Robin to return his sword to his father in Nottingham. The self-interested Robin soon realizes his opportunity — a near double for Loxley, he assumes the identity of the fallen knight, and he and his men continue on in the role of Richard’s emissaries.
Returning to Nottingham, Robin finds the faithful Marion (Cate Blanchett), a teenage bride left 10 years before to maintain the land while her new husband went off to the Crusades. Loxley’s old father is distraught at the loss of his son, but is more concerned about the immediate future — under medieval law and without a husband, Marion will scarcely be able to retain the land. He proposes a bargain with Robin — he will give him the sword if he will consent to act the role of his returned son for a time.
Robin readily agrees, although Marion isn’t so sure. Times are hard in the village — King John is enforcing a ruinous tax, a dishonest sheriff seems set on causing trouble for Marion, and the church refuses to help the villagers. After the village’s seed store burns, Robin, never one for subtlety, waylays the bishop’s wagon at night and retrieves enough grain to replace the lost seed.
Robin has been fascinated with the words engraved on the sword’s blade — “Rise and rise again, until the lambs become lions.” Old Sir Walter tells Robin of his father, a stonemason who was executed when Robin was a child — his only fault being born too soon. He had preached an early form of the social contract, claiming that a mutual bond guaranteed subjects protection and justice in exchange for their loyalty. With England dissolving into flames, barons rising up against a tyrant king, and Godfrey double-crossing John by serving Philip of France, Robin — the commoner-become-knight —risks everything to fulfill his father’s dream and proclaim in a proto-Declaration the audacious principles that liberty for all is best protected by a law for all.
This treatment of Robin presents a unique take on the outlaw’s background and motivations. He’s been depicted for centuries as either a yeoman-turned-outlaw or a noble-born partisan of King Richard’s, a scofflaw fighting for the rights of the poor and working to stymie John’s usurpation of power while Richard was away.
Ridley Scott’s Robin is a commoner masquerading as a knight, and rather than fight for one king or another, defends a law to bind kings. Despite these differences, Sherwood aficionados will still get recognizable glimpses of Robin’s merry men on the first adventures that bind them so closely: Friar Tuck, Little John, Allan-a-dale, and Will Scarlett all make appearances.
There may be relatively little rough language or inescapable imagery in the film, but this retelling is not one for the kids. Suggestive conversations between the archers are frequent, and we find the dissolute John in bed with a French princess more than once.
Marion describes rather vividly what she will do to Robin if he presumes upon their awkward arrangement, but Robin remains a gentleman and little is shown of their relationship. Violence is frequent and brutal, involving stabbings, arrow and sword wounds, the execution of a father seen through the eyes of a child, and the burning of a village over the heads of its inhabitants, but the gore remains surprisingly low overall.
The film plays fast and loose with history outside of the Sherwood legend, with inaccuracies ranging from minor details to retiming events by a decade or more, to both good and ill effect. The sudden death of King Richard that sets up Robin’s path to becoming a landed knight wasn’t so sudden in real life — Richard was wounded at Chalus Castle, but died in his mother’s arms of a septic wound, scarcely necessitating the hasty delivery of his crown to England by secret courier.
Significantly, the differences between the French and the English are highlighted and emphasized in the movie — Richard reigned over as much territory in France as in England, and Philip II did have a blood claim to the English throne.
Many later events of the film, including the French invasion and the rise of the barons, are time-shifted forward from the events surrounding the sealing of the Magna Carta in 1215 to fit the demands of the plot. While John colluded with Philip II to prevent Richard’s return to power, it was the barons who invited the French king to England to topple John’s tyrannical reign.
Despite these historical inaccuracies, Ridley Scott has woven a surprising tale, piggybacking on the Robin Hood legend to present the heady days when men first began to believe that kings, too, were subject to law, and liberty was a thing of right rather than privilege.